


Ornate Ceilings

by dunedinparsley



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Eating Disorders, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9917783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dunedinparsley/pseuds/dunedinparsley
Summary: When a teacher is caught in a sexual abuse scandal, the third-years in the Drama department of Castle University for the Creative Arts are given a young and enigmatic teacher to guide them through the performing arts.In which creative arts universities are complex places to be, literary allusions are abundant, power dynamics are malleable, bodies are useless, and post-traumatic symptoms are dominant.Please note ongoing content warnings for explicit representations of anorexia nervosa, and PTSD, with ongoing themes of sexual violence. Additional warnings will be attached to the beginning of each chapter.





	1. Chapter 1

Trigger warnings for actors being involved in scenes with guns and murder, sexual abuse, drug use, a reference to suicide. One brief use of a homophobic slur, in character.

* * *

  
"The architecture is incredible here." The short woman who had been otherwise reserved throughout the tour of the senior building smiled at him.

"I feel that if you can't say the architecture of a university is incredible then it doesn't qualify as a university," she said. She took the required two steps to stand at his side, but didn't try to engage in further contact, merely stared up at the ceiling once more. There was an odd companionship in staring at a ceiling covered in gold leaf and painted horror stories.  
  
The crowd had thinned, leaving only a few people in the hall, the short man and even shorter woman standing side by side. The man wondered whether there were words written there just for the artist's own pleasure in their work-time, because he sure as hell couldn't read them, standing on the tips of his toes, probably giving himself neck problems. There was a power-play on the ceiling, even without the words of the story. He didn't know if education was a power-play in and of itself, nor if the creative arts all boiled down to conflict, but there was a wild discomfort in his stomach. Maybe it was the art style, twisting faces, void of expression, hidden under dark hoods or just escaping them. Vibrant colours and perfect gold juxtaposed with the cracking flesh of the ceiling.  
  
No matter why, he hated the ceiling. A very sophisticated part of himself was pleased that at least he appreciated it, respected it, too. Hatred in and of itself was void of artistic development. The rest of his parts merely hated it.  
  
“That one looks like you,” said the girl, pointing up at a fine-faced girl with golden hair. Her cloak was falling off her shoulders, her head one of the few exposed. Her eyes were brilliant blue, searching.

He wasn’t quite sure what she meant by it at first, then looked harder. He let himself fall back onto his heels. Maybe she was right. The girl on the ceiling yearned for something. She looked more like a porcelain doll than a human being, greying cracks and all.  
  
“I’m Xion,” said the girl. She was looking at him.  
  
“I’m Roxas.” He shook her proffered hand, the girl on the ceiling still imprinted in his mind. “You know, she looks like you, too.” Xion grinned. “Are you a third year?” he asked.  
  
“Yeah. You too?”  
  
“Yeah.” He glanced down at his watch. “What have you got now?”  
  
“Acting with a capital ‘A’,” she said. Her voice was thick with laughter and history. It seemed to him that she could tell a story in a syllable, if she so wished. “You?” He nodded. “I’ll race you, if you’re game,” she said. He wasn’t sure if her eyes were the reflection of the portrait or if the portrait was a reflection of her eyes.

His ever-hesitant lips broached his cheeks, breaking into a smile. “You’re on.”  
  
They chanted together, “Three, two, one--”

* * *

'Acting', with a capital 'A' and a great level of over-emphasis in its spoken name, in Room 8 E building was, so far, a rag tag team of people with varying qualities of hair, and varying levels of patience, spread out over dusty lounges and creaking floorboards. 

  
There was a person with long pink hair doing tongue trills in the corner near the mirrors while pretending not to look at his watch every twenty seconds.  
  
A short - very short - man with brown hair that looked like five dollars worth of hair products in and of itself, was talking animatedly to a near-identical blonde man with perhaps two dollars fifty cents of hair product holding it into sharp points. They sat on the floor as if it were a throne. A red-haired woman sat next to the darker twin, occasionally smiling at something he said, but reading on her phone. She and the black-haired woman in the stiff-backed chair next to the blonde twin competed for most practical hair.  
  
A woman with a stature more striking than anything else, her poise and ward of defiance just as prominent as the obnoxiousness of her blonde hair, paced the space, muttering under her breath. Three men in a gradient of shades of blonde hair and a gradient of eras of hairstyles were uncomfortably cramped on the couch, not just because the couch was small, but because they all looked like they were ready to break into a brawl at any given moment.  
  
The 'most obnoxious hair' award, however, went to a man hanging over the edge of the ancient desk, lolling head only further exposing the blindingly red hair in loose spikes, swept back from his forehead. His eyes were closed but he kept tapping his tongue piercing against his teeth in time with an inaudible beat. His eyes were lined, his skin was freckled, and he seemed almost anachronistic in the old room.  
  
The one with pink hair had evolved to vocal warm ups, which infuriated the trio of blondes to no end, but the blonde _twin_ joined in with a look of laughter in his eyes.

The woman with practical red hair was looking at the blonde twin with a cocked eyebrow, a silent demand. He stuck his tongue out at her."Hey, when does the teacher get here?" she asked.  
  
The man with fiercely impractical red hair tensed, seemed finally to pay attention. "Oh!" In one smooth motion he spun his superbly-leather-clad arse on the tabletop and jumped to his feet. "That's me. Nice to meet you all. We're playing spacejump."  
  
Silence.  
  
"What?"  
  
His hands rolled in the air, a clear ‘get on with it’. "Spacejump,” he said again.  
  
There was a quiver of motion through the room. No-one stood. "I haven't played spacejump since high school,” said the army-boy blonde, distinctive drawl.  
  
The red-head looked at him, startling green eyes. "Okay," he said, as if awaiting elaboration. When none came, he rolled his shoulders back, looked at each of them in turn. "Get in a circle, on your feet."  
  
He looked too young, too vivacious, to be a teacher. Some of them looked to one another as if to ask if it was a practical joke. The one with pink hair stepped from the mirrors to the teacher’s side. It prompted a flood of motion, a haphazard circle formed.  
  
"What's your name?" asked the red-head girl. She was standing at the teacher’s side. He was twenty centimetres taller than her, easily.  
  
He ignored her. He was, theoretically, looking straight ahead, but all of them felt a pull, felt watched. "Who's first?"  
  
The darker twin made a step forward. "Me. I'm--"  
  
The teacher spoke over him. "Who has a prompt?"  
  
The black-haired girl spoke up with absolute clarity. "An onlooker to the death of Jesus Christ."  
  
"Spacejump." With a mere hand gesture, the teacher indicated for the group to move back, broaden the circle. The twin stood, centred, tense. His posture had shifted. "Five, four, three, two--"  
  
“I told you not to look!” said the mother. A child clutched to her leg. She had buried his face in her thigh, hand in his hair. It was probably hurting him, the tension in her arm. “I know what your father said. You don’t have to listen to this, you don’t have to see this. Do you remember when we met him? Do you remember how gentle he was?” She paused, the child barely spoke. Over the roarings of the crowd she knew what he said by motion more than words. She was shaking slightly, face intricately contorted in pain. “Yes, the man with the soft hands. His father-- one of his fathers was a carpenter. He knows all about wood, he works with wood, and his hands are still soft.” She hoisted the child up onto her hip, still clutching the back of his head. “Don’t listen, my sweetheart.”  
  
She rocked the child, gently, bouncing her hip. Her eyes were locked on the crosses. All the others were already dead. There seemed to be a silent countdown in her eyes, her tears. One helpless sob escaped her lips--  
  
“Spacejump. Five, four, three, two, one--”

A firm shove to the chest. The man stumbled backwards, arms around his middle.

"Why are you like this?" she demanded.  
  
"Like _what_?" he snapped back, rubbing just below his collarbone where her hands had been.  
  
"Like a fucking leech." She ran her hands through her hair, almost violent. He stayed so perfectly still it was unnatural. "You meet someone and within a year, at best, you're done with them. You come into each person's life like a fucking forest fire, and then you leave them to crumble to ash--" Louder, louder, louder--  
  
"Stop with your poetic _bullshit_ , Sam!" he shouted. His arms fell to his sides, and he stepped backwards, away, away, away. "This isn't a young adult novel. This is _life_ , and you can hate me as much as you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you fucked up, too! I'm not one your characters, I'm a person, and I can't _deal_ with you right now!"  
  
She moved forwards. He moved backwards. "Can't you just--?"  
  
"Spacejump. Five, four, three, two--” No-one was moving. “Five, four, three, two, one--”  
  
So they were launched into two parents sending their lesbian daughter off to her first queer prom, from there a French woman, a refugee, searching desperately for her daughter in a room of only English-speakers.

  
"You can't touch me while I'm touching him, can you?" asked a man with a gun to a lover’s head. "God, you're pathetic. You fags are all the same.” He wanted a USB, something so simple yet so violent. It was a gang war, or maybe two political parties. "It won't just be him I kill,” the man with the gun stage-whispered, threatening, into his prisoner’s ear. He bit his earlobe.  
  
The man set his jaw, tried to stop shaking. "Don’t do it. I'm not worth it."  
  
The second-in-command, obviously so by his mere presence, stepped in front of the lover, the leader. He raised his gun. It was not the captor he killed.  
  
"Spacejump. Three, two, one--"  
  
A family tried to explain to a three year old that his mother killed herself. There were slamming doors and muffled tears and ‘what does ‘gone away’ mean?’ a hundred times over. One of the aunts, more by title than blood, pulled her wife with her. "I _can't_ _do this,_ ” she whispered. She sounded on the verge of laughter just as much as tears. “God, how... how could she do this to him?"  
  
Her wife tried to tame her hair, held her wrist to stop her fidgeting. "This isn't even about him!" she said. There was more fear in her eyes than there was clarity in her voice.

"How do you know?" The wife shook her head. She didn’t know. They both knew that. "How can you kill yourself when you have a sweet, loving, vulnerable child in your care?"  
  
"Don't you dare blame her for this!" The space between them was barely there, but the distance, hand to wrist, arm to arm, was violent. It was too much pain in too fragile a moment.  
  
"Who else is there to blame?"  
  
"Spacejump."  
  
Something of a parody of a high-school sit-com ensued, bad singing and all. A bigoted teacher demanded the removal of a headscarf, a boy was forcibly outed.  
  
“Spacejump.” The teacher did not wait. He stepped forwards and dropped to his knees in front of the blonde twin.  
  
  
"How should I your true love know from another one? By his cockle hat and staff, and his sandal shoon!" She half-sang, half-spoke, looking up imploringly at the woman, so desperate for understanding.  
  
The woman leaned down, brushed her hand over the girl’s forehead, hair from her eyes. "Alas, my sweet lady, why this song?" she asked. Her panic was conveyed in her stillness. A man stood with his nieces, an arm around each of them, glaring at the woman on the floor as if she were dirt. A politician and his right-hand-man stood side-by-side, both shaking their heads as the girl sang.  
  
"He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone."  
  
"She's mad,” one of the men said.  
  
The girl got to her feet, and while she still addressed the woman, she looked at the two men, rage and grief in her arms, her neck, her shaking legs. "He is dead and gone, lady, he is _dead and gone_."  
  
The lady tried to put an arm around her while reprimanding the men, "She's not well, she's--" The girl dropped to her knees once more. She could not stand, although she tried. She buried her face in her hands, laughing, or maybe sobbing.  
  
The two little girls, the nieces, both hid at their uncle’s side.  
  
"Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day, all in the morning betime, and I a maid at your window, to be your Valentine,” she sang. She crawled over the little family. She looked not at the two girls, but at the man, gaze too deep. “Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes, and dupp'd the chamber-door; let in the maid, that out a maid never departed more." She grabbed the bottom of his shirt and yanked him down. He slapped her with the back of his hand just as he kicked her.  
  
"Get off me!"  
  
A stillness was broken.  
  
"Is she drunk?" asked the right-hand-man.  
  
"What's wrong with her?" asked one of the little girls.  
  
"You wanted me on my knees, didn't you?" she asked of the man. She stayed, kneeling, hands crossed neatly in her lap. The lady was seemingly trying to figure out how best to come near her, to soothe her. "That's what you said," she whispered. Her words devolved into a filthy cackle, the rhyme a violation. "Said all sorts of nasty things, flowers and skin and cunts and rings." He seemed too shocked to move and her fingers went pale with the strength of her grip on his belt.  
  
The lady seemed to have broken. "Alia, Willow, get away from him."  
  
Again, the man kicked the girl away, and she laughed, or sobbed, or maybe both, on her side.  
  
He glared at his sister, gesticulating wildly to his companions. "You can't honestly believe--" The two other men stood in front of the little girls, their eyes stone on his face.  
  
The girl was hurt, badly. The lady kneeled down beside her, wide-eyed with shock. She ran a hesitant hand through the girl’s hair, began to speak, only to be cut off with a desperate repetition of, "He is dead and gone, lady! He is _dead_ and gone! He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and--"  
  
"What the fuck have you done?" ‘Fuck’ fell from the lady’s lips like violence.  
  
The girl did not move, but somehow she morphed back into the teacher. The voice of the teacher returned, clean of tears and violence. "Spacejump. Three, two--"

Teenagers, high or drunk or both, from the nerds who had never touched a smoke before to the kids who had touched little else. The clumsy daydreams, unreality of physical contact, the longing for sleep. The police coming only led to tittering, one or two people attempting to hide under tables and chairs.

"Spacejump."  


“Oh, knees in." The instructor touched a boy’s skull, as if it would send a jolt of energy straight to his knees. Maybe he believed it. "Back straight. Think hard on something. Imagine a ribbon circling around and around and around, hundreds of different colours. See nothing else, for as long as it takes. If words creep in, well, you need to push them back with that one image, one thought." His voice was syrupy sweet, thick and rich. His corrective touches were gentle, and when he hummed the class hummed, too. "Just let the hum become one with you, one with everything. Don't hold onto a sense of self." Three knocks on the doorframe. His body changed. _Everything_ about him changed, just at the sight of the man. He seemed to forget the students were there, he walked by them as obstacles, not people. "What are you doing here?" he asked, a frantic whisper in the corridor.  
  
"Watching you teach young kids how to disassociate." The man seemed comfortable there, comfortable to a claim. He touched the instructor’s lower lip, slapped away.  
  
"I don't know what you mean.” Part of his indignance surely came from the fact that he didn’t know what disassociation was. “I'm helping them."  
  
"Oh?" An amused smile, a hand on the wall above the other man’s head.

"Meditation is the key to a peaceful, balanced life,” the instructor said quietly, by rote. He didn’t know that the students had stopped meditating, desperate to listen or to whisper in each others’ ears.  
  
Both hands on the wall above his head. He was trapped, breath wracking, unable to look away. "I doubt you would have said that last night when you were screwing me on the bathroom floor,” the man said it conversationally, an assessment of the situation and no more.

The instructor almost gagged. "Don't _talk_ like that. It's vulgar.” He paused, met the man’s eyes. “Just like you." For just a second the man looked hurt. He dropped his arms.  
  
The teacher became the teacher again, not a gossiping child. "Spacejump. Come out in the reverse of the order that you came in. One line, in a new setting, each. Freeze until you’re up."  
  
"Your pity party is really _fucking me over_ , man."  
  
"See you on the other side, huh?"  
  
"We're blood and bone, that's all we are."  
  
"That works for me. Nicely."  
  
"She's doing this alone because you _said so_."  
  
"I'm nothing more than a walking test tube."  
  
"Get down on your knees and pray for all I care, but we're done."  
  
"The cardboard's fine. We just need some sticky tape."  
  
"Gotta save the day sometime, huh?"  
  
"I'm finally in the sun and all I want is to get out of it."  
  
The circle was changed. The clock on the wall didn’t work, forever thirteen past eight. It seemed appropriate. The light hadn’t changed, though the windows were open. They were vulnerable, over-sensitive.

The teacher examined his finger nails for a long, long thirty seconds. "Good,” he said at last. "All of you breathe for a sec, get comfy." He indicated the space around them vaguely. He sat down on the edge of the desk, crossing his legs. He waited until everyone was seated, before pointing at the nineties-style blonde. "Name?"  
  
"Hayner."  
  
"Name?"  
  
"Larxene."  
  
"You know me. Marluxia Evans--"  
  
"Name?"  
  
"Seifer."  
  
"Tidus."  
  
"I'm Sora."  
  
"I'm Kairi."  
  
"Xion."  
  
"Roxas."  
  
The teacher looked at each of them like they were the only person in the room, if only for a second. "Have any of you not played spacejump before?" he asked. A few people raised their hands. He nodded, clicked his tongue ring against his teeth. "Nice one. You did good."  
  
"What's your name?" asked Sora. His big blue eyes were cautious. His brother across the room knew that Sora was trying to figure out the man, find his lines and definitions.  
  
"Axel. Spencer. Got it memorised?" His drawl cast an illusion of passivity. Roxas saw Xion tilt her head. She was a very still girl, the motion was unprecedented. She was confused, curious. He desperately wanted to look at Axel, but each time he did he found it difficult to look away. He was a mess of contrast, things that shouldn’t be beautiful rendered to anomalous magnificence. He looked too tired, too young, had too few defined edges to be a teacher.  
  
"I thought we had... Lionel Harding, was it?" Kairi asked. It was the moment that every one in the room realised she was going to be the teacher’s pet, whether the teacher chose her or not.  
  
His eyes on her could have made her flinch. There was venom, but more than that, power. Capacity. "He's in jail for sexually abusing three of his students,” he said, each word clipped to precision. “You've got me instead, I do hope you don't mind." His smile was a weapon. He shuffled back on the desk, crossed his legs under him. "Who wants to give feedback to anyone else's performance, group work, concept..?"  
  
"The meditation thing was hard,” admitted Tidus.  
  
"Yeah, it was good; you all struggled. It showed, in some of you." Axel set his eyes on Seifer. It had been his piece. "The set up did make it hard for us to get the context straight up, we had a few awkward moments not knowing what we were doing, where we were. In future, an establishing line, even, would simplify things. Else we just drift. Next?"  
  
Hayner raised his hand slightly. "I don't think all of us have been high."  
  
Axel snorted. "Not a course requirement, but yeah. Further work required."  
  
"The formal one was sort of blank. There wasn't a drive behind it,” said Xion.  
  
Roxas beside her nodded and added, "And there was too much drive and not enough character in the gun and USB one."  
  
Kairi was nodding. Her focus on whoever was speaking was a beautiful thing. There wasn’t a question for a moment that she heard and absorbed every word. "Yeah, we--" She gestured between herself and Sora "--didn't have a lot to work with without breaking the scene entirely. There were too many of us for the concept."  
  
Sora looked at Axel like perhaps he wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, to speak. "And yours was... really physical. Really sexual. I didn't know what to do with that."  
  
Axel looked bored. He looked ready to fall asleep, but he still met Sora’s gaze. "Well, in that situation you wouldn't have known either. You all know the play?"  
  
"It was Hamlet, Ophelia's madness. Act Four, Scene Five." Marluxia spoke like it was an offence to have implied that he _didn’t_ know the play. "You diverted it, ever so slightly." There was judgement in his tone.  
  
"You mixed contemporary and classical theatre without... a boundary. It was odd." Roxas’s voice was the most adaptable thing about him. Each of his characters had sounded impossibly different, even if the changes were unpickable. His natural tone was quite blank, but there was a clear drive behind his words. Axel looked at him like he was trying to figure him out. He was slower in his response than ever before that day.  
  
"You misquoted the ever contentious Gertrude." He was tasting the words under his tongue, lips left parted, piercing glinting as he shifted in the light.  
  
Roxas looked affronted, postured shifted. "You sort of threw it on me."  
  
Axel smirked. "True. Anything else?"  
  
"This wasn't what I expected." Larxene’s voice showed no discomfort or shame, but the rest of the group bit their tongues or looked fiercely uncomfortable.  
  
"No, I suppose it wouldn't be." His face hadn’t moved. He said nothing else. "Which other courses are you all taking? Majors?"  
  
So, Axel said their names, echoing the order in which they had introduced themselves, to Hayner in Contemporary Theatre, Larxene in Theatre Media, Tidus and Seifer in Acting for the Screen and Stage, Sora in Screen Acting, Kairi Directing, Marluxia and Roxas in Musical Theatre, Xion in a double degree of Composition and Acting for the Stage.  
  
"Is this the key unit for all of you?"  
  
"Not me," said Kairi.  
  
"One of two," said Xion.  
  
"Hm. Good." He got back to his feet and stretched, shirt riding up to display his hipbones, and the very edge of a tattoo. His arms were back down before they could decipher what it was. "Okay, we're playing again, but I need more motion this time. I will pause and instruct you when I choose and without warning, be receptive. Make use of your bodies and the space. You can use chairs, the desk, whatever you want. We won't form a circle. If it's not going to make sense or have a clear narrative, make it mean something. Give it drive."

* * *

Everyone was sweaty. Even Axel was a little out of breath, leaning against the desk. “Five minute break,” he said. Roxas checked his watch. The class had started at ten. It was almost twelve.  
  
“ _Five_?” Sora cried.  
  
“Fine, ten.” There was a quiet grumble as people went to their bags or left the room. Axel merely lay back down over the desk and checked his phone. Roxas and Xion were in quiet conversation about films they’d seen recently. There was an odd similarity to their faces, the way they moved. Maybe it was that they were both small and fine, but the way that they spoke was as if they had been doing so for years. Kairi and Sora seemed to be laughing at the two of them from the other side of the room, heads close together. Their hands were tangled, swinging lightly between them.  
  
Hayner and Seifer seemed to have hated each other from the moment they saw one another, and it was a shame. Their performance chemistry was brilliant, electric. It would be harder to use if they were at each others’ throats all the time.  
  
When everyone was back in the room, before Axel could speak, upright once more, Xion raised her hand. “Can we have a safeword, please?”  
  
He didn’t scoff or disregard the request, as many tutors had. Instead he mulled it over. “Come to me after this and tell me if you have any specific triggers or phobias and I will do my best, within reason, to avoid them.”  
  
“We need a proper safeword, this is a theatre class,” said Tidus. “There’s being resilient and brave, and being stupid, and too often the line’s crossed in drama.” It was the most he’d said out of character all day.  
  
That seemed to get on Axel’s nerves, and he snapped, “This is progressively sounding more like a torture chamber, for fuck’s sake.” He sighed, steepled his fingers together. "Okay. Your safeword is my name shouted very loudly."  
  
"I feel there needs to be something a little more precise than that,” said Larxene.  
  
"Fine, your safeword is..."  
  
"Just do 'drowning',” said Hayner. There were soft chuckles, and Axel smiled.  
  
"Repetitive, high school-esque. I love it. There, drowning." He raised an eyebrow at Xion. She blushed.  
  
“That’s good. Thank you.”  
  
“Okay, that’s done. We’re going to play a game over the course of the academic year, and I want you to listen closely as it’s important. All of it has been planned ahead, I will be monitoring your progress closely.” All eyes were on him. “Every week I will give you a text, whether that be a film, play, song, quote, book, a concept – anything. Alongside it I will give you a date. You can not write down either of them.” His voice implied more consequence than there realistically could be, but all of them were caught up in him. “On that date you will present a one to six minute interpretation or scene from that text. It can be a direct quote, or a physical theatre adaptation… go nuts. If you want to you can collaborate with someone else, with no more than three people in a group. Rehearse it well in advance, know what you are doing, because it’ll be clear if you don’t.”  
  
“Why can’t we write it down?”  
  
“Because you have to remember,” Axel said simply. He got to his feet. “If you have any questions you can come speak to me, and I will compile my answers into the course outline. Your first assignment is ‘make twenty words matter’, June the ninth.” Almost everyone itched to reach for their phone or a pen. Axel glared them down in silence. “We’re redoing the first spacejump we did today,” he said, and indicated for them all to stand. Xion struggled standing, and Roxas put a hand on her arm to help her up.  
  
“Everything we discussed afterwards and incorporated later – show me. It doesn’t have to be verbatim, but do not deviate too much from what was there before unless we deemed it lacking.”  
  
It was scarier than it should have been. Sora was gnawing at his lower lip. He’d been first, and he seemed to be trying to remember what he’d even said. It had only been a couple of hours before hand, but seemingly simple tasks, games, had exhausted all of them.  
  
“You all ready?”  
  
“Does it matter if we’re not?” Larxene asked. Axel smiled, mouth twisting at one side, eyes shining.  
“Not really, no.”

* * *

“Cool, that’s it for today.”  
  
The clock was still frozen, it did not serve those who looked to it. “We still have fifteen minutes left,” said Roxas. He was sitting on the edge of the desk beside Axel, slightly out of breath and red tinting his cheeks.  
  
“But we’re done.” Axel and Roxas examined each other carefully. “Actually, no, we’re not.” He gave off the impression that anything he was about to say had not been planned. “Tell me why your characters responded like they did.” He tossed a pencil at Hayner. “You and Seifer used exactly the same words as you did first time around. Why ‘vulgar’? Why did ‘vulgar’ hurt so much?”  
  
Seifer didn’t need to think before saying, “He’s HIV positive. The only person he told just used it against him.”  
  
Axel nodded. “Good. Just a couple of lines for each scene. Sora, tell me what the context was of you and your son meeting Jesus.”  
  
They all nodded. It was like vertigo, being in a room with Axel, following his instructions. Nothing seemed quite appropriate or quite real, but magnetic all the same. “There. Now we’re done. Unless you have a suggestion?” He looked to Roxas, who shook his head, ducked it down to hide his blushing. “See you Wednesday.”  
  
It was a slow departure, all of them collecting their things exchanging words or laughter. Axel stayed on the edge of the desk. “When did you graduate?” Roxas asked him. He hadn’t moved. He was perfectly still.  
  
Axel didn’t look at him. “Three years ago with Honours.” He slid off the desk and walked out the door.  
  
“I’m not sure if I hate him or adore him,” Xion said contemplatively. Roxas nodded.  
  
“He’s…”  
  
“Fucked up,” Larxene provided.  
  
“Evasive,” said Kairi.  
  
“Not quite real,” Roxas finished. There was a generalised nod.  
  
“He’s impressive,” said Sora. “Not… really _nice_.”  
  
“Does he need to be?” asked Tidus. “He wasn’t too critical, he just showed us where to improve.”  
  
“I need a nap,” Roxas said, with great clarity. That seemed to be the order for everyone to disperse. The room was empty within thirty seconds, door locked behind them.


	2. Chapter 2

Roxas sat on Sora, Kairi and Riku’s couch with his legs crossed under him. He had forgotten over the holidays how exhausting drama was, and it wasn’t even production or exam season yet. Ten hour days were average, he reminded himself, and soccer was nothing compared to a week at Castle in terms of leg tension. Still, he yawned and persisted with his work.   
  
He left Axel’s work until last, as it was both the most bizarre and most varied in difficulty. It all fit with the syllabus, that was clear, the course outline had barely changed from what the previous teachers had used. His approach was different. The way he framed things was different. Maybe he was doing _badly_ , but the cohort couldn’t quite make their mind up on that. They were learning. That was clear.   
  
Maybe their confusion was based in the man himself. He was tall and brutally thin, his appearance was a surreal mix of genres and colours, and he was so, so young. Marluxia knew him from heaven-knows-where, and he was secretive about it, but he did say that Axel was younger than him – twenty-five or younger. It was wrong. Roxas was twenty-two, and he didn’t think that age was a marker of talent or capacity to educate, but he had never experienced it before. Not so starkly, anyway.   
  
“Are you staying for dinner?” asked Riku. His words were clipped. Roxas was tired of their animosity, but he couldn’t say that he helped the situation.   
  
“If that’s cool.” Riku nodded and went back to the kitchen, Kairi replacing him in the living room. She sat beside Roxas with a neat flare of her skirts. “How’s directing going?”   
  
“It’s a new stream, so a bit… tedious?” Kairi said.Roxas sort of adored her and her gentleness. “It’s half Axel’s responsibility, half Luxord’s.” Roxas winced. “He’s okay, really. They’re not quite sure how they’re going to manage it.” She leaned on his shoulder, and Roxas realised in a flash that she was a family member. He should have known that years ago, but it had passed him by. She was so natural in her affection. “How’s Xion?”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
Kairi laughed. “Xion. How is she?”  
  
Roxas put his laptop and books to the side. “Good, I think. We’re going to a production of Guys and Dolls on Sunday.”   
  
“Are you two..? Do you..?” Roxas raised an eyebrow. “You’re so oblivious.” He knew that, but it still stung a little. “Are you interested in her?” she asked. He rolled his eyes and dropped his head back.  
  
“I’m gay, Kairi.”  
  
“I know,” she said, and he didn’t doubt it. “But if you feel… that way, you shouldn’t fight it just because of the past.”  
  
“I don’t feel that way. But I wouldn’t fight it if I did, Kairi. Really, you know me.” He considered pulling his phone out, texting Xion. “We just… Kairi, you three have been together in some way or another since you were children. I’ve never had a best friend.”

  
“That’s not true,” Kairi said. Sora came and sat at Kairi’s side, not saying anything, just curling up against her.   
  
“It is.” Roxas didn’t know what else to add to that. “Xion hasn’t either.”  
  
“That’s horrible.”  
  
“But we get along really well. It’s nice.” Riku swore loudly in the kitchen. For such an eloquent man he had the capacity to be vulgar.   
  
“You okay, babe?” Sora called out to him. He didn’t respond, but the tap started running. “Burn,” he said. Kairi nodded.   
  
“I haven’t had one long-term boyfriend and you have two,” Roxas said to Kairi. She chuckled. “Sora, I blame you for my loneliness. Hogging humans.”  
  
“You could blame Cloud. Or Ven!”   
  
“Ven’s thirteen!”   
  
“He has a girlfriend too, though.”   
  
“What?”   
  
Sora shuffled so that his legs were over both Kairi and Roxas, the twins staring at one another. “He has a girlfriend!” Sora repeated. “Her name’s Sarah and she’s in his English class. She’s very smart and she has nice hair.”   
  
“Why did he tell you?”   
  
“Because I actually call him rather than hiding from telephones!”   
  
The twins bickered for a while, Riku returning with burn cream on his hand to sit with – or more appropriately _on_ – Sora and Kairi, Sora petting his hair even as he squabbled with Roxas. Riku read as the other three talked. He was studying English Literature. Sora and Kairi had begged him to come to Castle with them, said that the creative composition department was brilliant, but the courses and lecturers he wanted were all at Twilighttown University. It worked out well enough, as all of them had to travel, so they got a flat of their own in between the universities. They liked living outside of uni accommodation. Roxas still found living out of uni accommodation weird. He had liked the structure of it. It was nice to have his own space, though, be able to stick stuff on the walls.  
  
He was struggling not to think about Axel’s tattoo. The man had a liking for bizarre and revealing clothing, and Xion had mumbled something to Roxas about how fragile Axel’s self esteem must be. Roxas thought it was quite the opposite. You couldn’t behave, dress, like he did if he wasn’t self-confident. Something more like a crop top than a shirt had revealed more of the tattoo. It was black, perfectly defined lines, but without the part of it that disappeared below his jeans, it was impossible to tell what it was.   
  
Roxas didn’t want to think about Axel’s hipbones for a second more of his entire life, but they were a frequent visitor, flashing through his neurons. Three weeks in and he knew no more about the man than he had the day they met. Sure, tutors were supposed to have boundaries up, but his were brick walls. Roxas had no protest to this, in theory, fond of brick walls himself, but he wanted the pillars to crumble on Axel Spencer. He wanted more understanding of the way he threw his body into every motion as if he didn’t care if it broke.   
  
He glared back at his laptop. New theory classes set in the next day, and it would only mean more work. He got back home from Sora’s at almost midnight, but at least finished his work. 

* * *

There was a folk tale from university that sometimes, at the beginning of a year when a student is choosing their class times, a voice will whisper in their ear ‘take the eight o’clock class’, giving reason upon reason as to why it would be a good idea. It was decided that this voice was that of the devil.   
  
Roxas was bundled up in jumper, scarf and beanie, silently cursing the weather. He cradled his coffee to his chest, waiting for the heater to start working. Xion was at his right side, looking half asleep with her head in her hands. She was decidedly _not_ a morning person. She hadn’t even asked how he was, and she was outstandingly conscientious of such things.   
  
The teacher came through the stage-front door, just as one last student burst through the main door. It was Axel, in a deep green hooded poncho. The teacher did not react, merely erected herself at the podium with a fierce grace. Axel settled himself at the end of Roxas and Xion’s row, tugging laptop and books alike from under the poncho. Roxas could hardly take his eyes off him.   
  
“Welcome to Contextual Studies.” Her voice was a blade. “My name is Professor Alice Fleetwood. You may call to me ‘Alice’.” She assessed the room with astute eyes, taking in each of their motley bunch. There were maybe twenty, overall, all but for Sora and Kairi seeming severely distressed to be awake. “Starting front row, moving back and turning around, tell me your name, a quote you like, your sociocultural standings, political standings, your sexual orientation and gender, and economic position.”  
  
“And our zodiacs, too?” asked one man, drawling. His coffee cup had barely ceased brushing his lips.  
  
“If you so wish.” Though she had made it clear who was first to speak no-one made a noise. She smiled, and it was a toothy, warm thing. “Feel uncomfortable. Let it itch. If you do not answer all of those questions I will ask you to leave and you will not return until you do.” She relished in their squirming.   
  
She shrugged off her coat as the first woman spoke, swinging it from her fingertips over the podium. The woman’s voice was clear and confident, and it set precedent for the others.   


Xion’s voice was marred by her yawning, but still she said, “Xion Strathford. Intersectional feminist. I think I’m queer. Maybe. Upper-middle class. Pisces. ‘Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.’” She spoke Vonnegut’s words as she likely had the many times she’d spoken them before. Gentle reverence, tongue curling under each syllable like a cradle.   
  
She stole Roxas’s cup as he spoke. “Roxas Brannan. I’m aiming for intersectional feminism. I’m mixed-race. I’m a gay, cisgender man. I don’t want to overlook minority status in any field of life, including the arts. Most of my political views are informed by the aforementioned. I’m upper class, and I’m an Aquarius. Um… ‘the wheel is come full circle. I am here.’” He stole his drink back from her.   
  
“What does cisgender mean?” he heard one boy whisper.  
  
“Not transgender,” whispered another. Roxas smiled.   
  
The group went around with varying levels of discomfort, some stumbling in an attempt to find a quote, some unsure of how they could even summarise themselves.   
  
Kairi’s voice was like wind chimes. She seemed in her place, in the morning chill. “Kairi McNamara. Intersectional feminist, but more importantly humanist. ‘A woman is not written in braille. You do not have to touch her to know her’. I’m a queer cisgender woman. I’m a liberal person. I’m middle class. Aries.”   
  
Sora didn’t budge from his slumped pose at the desk, but his eyes were bright. He was taking in all that the others had said about themselves. Roxas thought he should mark the date, and in six months time ask Sora if he remembered them all. “Sora Brannan. I’m Roxas’s twin. Feminist, mixed-race, pansexual, cisgender man. Pretty much the same as Roxas. Upper class, Aquarius. ‘If only life could be a little more tender, and art a little more robust’.”   
  
Roxas had forgotten about Axel’s presence. His voice was lower, scratchy with tiredness and the chill. He drawled with a precision that Roxas was sure must be rehearsed. “Axel Spencer. I don’t think men get to decide if they’re feminists, but that’s the goal. Feeding into the liberal agenda, I guess.” He made the words flow into one another, made them seem part of a whole. It was disconcerting and comforting all in one. “I’m a queer, cisgender man. I’m lower-middle class, and I’m an Aries. ‘If I can’t find love, if I can’t have peace, give me a bitter glory’.” There was no reverence there. ‘Bitter glory’ fit him as well two words could fit a man.  
  
“Stop staring,” Xion whispered in his ear. He blushed and forced his gaze to the lecturer, who was writing some key quote or another on the board. He took notes, and he did pay attention, but his eyes kept falling back to the page before him. The words were just lines.   
  
Xion pinched him. “--will be pairing up, but first, someone give me a fairytale. The first one that comes to mind.”

  
“Peter Pan,” said Sora straight away.   
  
“Hardly a fairytale,” said Roxas.   
  
“Another, then,” said Alice.   
  
He sighed, “Snow White and Rose Red-- no, the Little Mermaid.” There was a generalised snicker.   
  
“Are you White or Red?” Xion asked. He kicked her foot.  
  
“Alice in Wonderland,” said Kairi. The teacher nodded at her with a small smile and the beginnings of a laugh.

  
“The Little Match Girl.” Silence followed Xion’s answer, though no-one could quite place why. She chuckled, ran a restless hand through her hair.

  
“Beauty and the Beast,” offered Axel. It was a hollow answer.   
  
“Good. Pair up. Give each other a fairy tale that means something to you, find out why your partner chose that fairy tale.” There was shuffle of people moving closer to each other, compacting. Xion looked side to side, and pointed to Axel. He wasn’t moving, arms crossed over his chest.  
  
“You go with him.”   
  
“What about you?” Roxas asked, affronted. She looked to the man a few seats away from her. He was without partner, too. She smiled, and that was all it took for Roxas to gather his things and move to the end of the row.   
  
“Morning.” Axel’s smile was small, but Roxas appreciated it all the same.   
  
“Morning.” He turned to a fresh page and wrote ‘Axel Spencer. Beauty and the Beast’. Axel copied him. His handwriting was a scrawled mess, almost illegible. It wasn’t that Roxas could _complain_ , his was appalling, but it was readable.   
  
Axel kept writing, mumbling in time with his words. “You’re an intersectional feminist. You’re cishomo. Upper class. Aquarius. Classical theatre, particularly Shakespeare. Yeah?” Roxas nodded. “Snow White and Rose Red, then The Little Mermaid. Are we talking Disney or are we talking romance-or-eternal torture?”  
  
“Romance-or-eternal torture. Are we talking ‘dreams of the prince and just loves the beast as a friend’ or Disney?”   
  
“Disney.” Axel leaned back in the chair, head back and eyes closed. “Why Snow White and Rose Red? Beyond the obvious,” he added, gesticulating vaguely behind him to Sora.   
  
Roxas bit his lip and tried to resist the urge to pull a piece of lint from Axel’s forearm. “The inevitability of things. How things are all linked. How cruel people will always be cruel. Aren’t you supposed to work that out?”   
  
“You went with the Little Mermaid, man, that was just trivia.” Axel yawned and pulled the poncho off, crossed his legs. “Alright.” He wiped bleary eyes. He rotated his exercise book and divided it into columns. “The Little Mermaid wants out of the context she’s in, forever longing to get out of a situation she feels trapped in. Her kindness isn’t recognised in saving the prince. She makes a brutal deal which isn’t fulfilled and makes her live in excruciating pain. There’s a competition, albeit subtly so, between her and the prince’s betrothed. Misremembering or miscommunication fucks everything up. She can’t kill the prince, self-sacrificing instead. She is respected for that and given new chances. That’s it, yeah?”   
  
“I want you doing Drunk History fairytales.” Axel chuckled. For the first time that day he made eye contact. His eyes were perfectly lined in purple, tiny teardrops in the same colour below his eyes. Roxas imitated his table, all of Axel’s self proclaimed traits joined by ‘aesthetically motivated’. Axel snorted.   
  
“’Motivated’ is a strong word.”   
  
“It’s eight in the morning and your eyes are lined,” Roxas pointed out. “You’re either brutally self conscious or aesthetically motivated.”   
  
Axel shrugged. “Why not both?” Roxas hesitated before writing that down. He didn’t think it was both. “So… you’re upper class, but you don’t seem arrogant enough to believe being lower class would be better, yeah?” Roxas nodded. “She feels trapped an unrecognised. She’s terrified but she’s got guts. Decision making is hard. She truly believes in love at first sight. Are you a sentimentalist?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Then it’s the ‘inevitability’ thing, yeah? Things happen for a reason, no matter how they come to be they were always going to.” Roxas nodded. His skin crawled. Axel wasn’t even looking at him, and that somehow made his analysis worse. “So much of it is being trapped. How are you trapped, Roxas?” He went to answer, to snap, but Axel kept talking. “Your brother’s queer, so I doubt it’s a sexuality thing. An Aquarius is a sucky thing to be, but I somehow doubt that it’s causing you that much distress.”   
  
Roxas said nothing. He stared at the buttons on the side of Axel’s shirt. They looked uncomfortable and impractical and _old_. Well loved, antique, maybe. “Are you Belle, or the Beast?” he forced himself to say. “The prince who makes a bad decision and is cursed for it, turned cruel, or Belle, the beautiful poor girl who is both too kind and head-strong?”   
  
“Gaston,” Axel said, deadpan. Roxas snorted, and raised an eyebrow. “Fine, both.”   
  
Roxas marked down Axel’s class with Belle. “The Beast has often been treated as an allegory for homosexuality, or HIV/AIDS.” Axel made a low, grumbling noise in his throat. Roxas wasn’t good at the whole analysis thing in the way he was. “Something out of your control that defines you in some way. ‘If I...’ what was that quote?”   
  
“’If I can’t find love, if I can’t have peace, give me a bitter glory’.”   
  
“Isolation?” Roxas said. “Is that it? Due to sexuality or… something else?” He knew his tone was prying, and Axel knew it, too. It was the point, he thought, prying. There was a ruffling motion, and Xion stood beside him.   
  
“You’d rather spontaneously combust than be forgotten about,” she said to Axel. She didn’t seem to think of it as a big deal of something to say. “I think that’s what it’d come down to,” she said to Roxas. “Excuse me.” She slid past them and left them staring at each other.  
  
“Is she right?” Roxas asked after a long silence.  
  
Axel stared at his hands, painted black nails. “Yeah.” He coughed, straightened his back. Roxas jotted down ‘both’ next to ‘aesthetically motivated’. “What with Snow White and Rose Red, where you’re the quiet Winter to Sora’s Summer, and being trapped in the Little Mermaid, self sacrificial and forever unacknowledged--” His words, so clipped and matter of fact, fell away. Roxas wanted to chase them, find their end.  
  
“What?” he asked. Axel was biting his tongue, he was sure.   
  
“Well.” He was holding something back.   
  
“ _What?_ ” Roxas snapped.   
  
“Well, clearly it’s clearly still more about Snow White and Rose Red. If you’re forever shadowed, no matter whether your circumstances are great, you’re out of control to the other person’s motion.” He was spouting absolute _bullshit_ that Roxas was sure he didn’t believe, but anger still bubbled in him.  
  
“My identity is not Sora’s! We’re different people!” Axel shrugged. He didn’t write anything down. “You’ve seen both of us doing the same things, we approach things differently, I’m not defined by him.”  
  
“Okay, okay. Sorry.”   
  
“What left you with an inferiority complex?” Roxas asked. Axel raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow.   
  
“That’s cheating, stealing from Xion.”   
  
“It’s still a valid question, whether you’re Belle or the Beast.”   
  
“It’s not an inferiority complex, it’s a responsibility complex,” Axel said at last. “They’re cousins.”  
  
They made little progress after that, but there was less tension. They laughed at the idea of a Drunk History with fairytales, and pondered whether happy endings defeated the purpose of a folk tale. Their sheets on each other were full, at least.   
  
Axel stayed back once almost everyone had left to speak to the professor. Roxas was relaying his time with Axel to Xion as she pulled on jumper, scarf, gloves and beanie. She hummed. “Everyone else was so chill,” she said. “Trust you and Captain Drama to defy tranquility.” He scoffed and hooked his arm in with hers.   
  
“You really are a writer, aren’t you?” he asked. She smiled, and her cheeks went pink.  
  
“I try.”

* * *

They lay on one of the tables in the senior drama hall. The ceiling still creeped Roxas out. Xion loved it though, and she’d taken to narrating what was going on. Roxas couldn’t see the story she painted with her words in the pictures, but he loved listened to her stories. She could build whole lifetimes with her words. Roxas sat up to eat, and she kept speaking. “You know, this sounds like a musical,” he said when she paused for a moment.   
  
“If I’m writing the story then you’re writing the music,” she said.   
  
He laughed. She did not. “Wait, seriously?”   
  
“Yeah, seriously!” She sat up carefully and slowly, but she spoke quickly. “Why not? You’re an incredible musician, and we’re young and reckless, so now is the best time for it.”   
  
“I’m reckless. You’re cautious,” he said. She glared at him. He mulled it over, and looked up at the girl that shared their face. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” She grinned, loose and elastic, and warmth filled him up. “Are we weird?” he asked.   
  
“Why?”   
  
“Because we sort of looked at each other and went ‘ah yes, that one. I’m choosing you’, and that was that.”   
  
She stood up on the table. Her skirt, deep blue wool, flared around her. “I feel like I’ve known you forever.” She was looking at the girl on the ceiling. “That’s probably weird.” She looked down at him. “I sort of feel that about Axel,” she said. “Don’t you?”   
  
Roxas nodded. He would have blushed, had someone else said it, but with her he didn’t feel the slightest bit of discomfort. “You’re just one of those people who understands people, though,” he said. She chuckled, and kneeled down. He wondered how they looked. Half the windows were glass, the other brick. Grey mist and mottled brown, and two people dressed in blue on a circular table, in the centre of a room with a fairytale on the ceiling.  
  
“It’s important that we met,” she said. “That’s all that matters.” She sat back down, lay back down. “Who are our main characters?” she asked. Roxas stayed sitting up, and pulled a battered notebook from his bag. 

* * *

Axel clapped, once, loudly. He had them all balanced on a thread. They froze. “To those of you who are in Contextual Studies, I’m not allowed to work with you – conflict of interest and all.” The four it applied to nodded. Axel didn’t exactly look displeased about it.   
  
He looked down. Everyone fell back to motion – except for Roxas, who stared at Axel without expression. Axel pointedly avoided his gaze. Roxas felt powerful and furious, and picked up his bag with a harsh breath. Xion raised an eyebrow.  


* * *

Xion was bleary eyed and her shirt was crumpled. Roxas had left for his vocal workshop, and her hands were starting to ache from writing. She wrung them out vigorously and turned her neck side to side. The third and fourth year premises of the university were so different, structurally, than the first and second. Xion still felt like she was going to get lost.  
  
A young woman in a hooded dress seemed to be very much lost.   
  
It was the girl from the ceiling.   
  
From the soft curl of her gold hair to the deep blue of her eyes to a scar on her cheek that mimicked the cracks in the paint, it was the girl.   
  
Her hands were covered in paint. She pushed the hood back and more hair fell over her eyes. She pushed it back and her eyes fell on Xion. “Hi,” she said. “I’m so sorry for the bother, but… I’m a bit lost.” Xion stood and shook her head, standing closer to the woman. They were the same height.  
  
“No, don’t worry. Where are you going?”   
  
The girl laughed and pushed her hair back again. “I’m looking for one-oh-eight, and I’m pretty sure I’m on level one, but...” She shrugged. “I’m from the Art department. We only have one floor.”   
  
“I have a class there in--” Xion checked her watch. “--forty five minutes. I’ll take you.”

  
“Thank you. I’m Namine,” said the blonde girl, offering her hand. Xion felt paint cling to her skin.  
  
“Xion.” She wanted to ask about the painting, but she felt like there were butterflies in her throat, let alone her stomach. “What brings you to Drama from Art?” She gestured in vaguely the right direction. They fell into step with one another easily, no height difference or forced speed.  
  
“One of the tutors needs someone in Art for his third years.”   
  
“Ah, Axel?” Namine nodded. “I’m one of his third years.”   
  
“Oh, wonderful!” Her eyes were so bright. The scar seemed out of place on such a soft face, but it was pale with age. “What’s he like? His emails vary from… very polite to very… abrupt.”   
  
Xion couldn’t quite find the words to describe Axel. She hummed, quietly, trying to tell Namine as such _without_ words. “He’s… tall,” she said at last.  
  
“Everyone’s tall to me,” Namine said with a singing laugh. “And to you, I’d say.”   
  
“True.” She put a hand on Namine’s arm, guiding her into a corridor. “This is the tricky part. Everyone assumes that this is just a path to the bathrooms, but...” Namine nodded. “Axel is… very eccentric. He’s really young. He’s twenty-four or so, so a lot of us are his age.”   
  
Namine sighed and came to a halt, Xion stopping with a jolt. “Sorry, my hair...” Namine tugged a paint brush, three pencils, a wallet, an apple, and finally a hair tie out of her pocket. She tied it back with deft fingers, revealing more scars on her neck. Xion averted her gaze. “I need to cut it off soon. Is it good having short hair?” She stepped back to Xion’s side, and they promptly took a left turn.  
  
“It’s nice,” Xion admitted. “I can roll out of bed and not fuss over it.”  
  
“I do that anyway,” Namine admitted in turn, laughing a little. “What are these rooms?”   
  
“Dance studios for the Drama students, because the Dancers didn’t want to share theirs. They get used for body work in general, and the dancers didn’t want fencing swords on their floor.” Namine poked her head into each of the rooms. If there _were_ classes running they wouldn’t have noticed her, the way she melded in shielding her. Xion watched her, heart singing for how gentle Namine was. There wasn’t enough gentleness in the world. “Here we go. Room Eight.”  
  
Axel was sitting on the desk, laptop on his knees. His makeup was subtler than Xion had seen on him before, compensated for by the fact that his shirt was an almost _metallic_ grey velvet. He had earphones in, mouthing along to something with his pretty pink lips. The two women stood in the door, a tad awkwardly. He looked up after a while and yanked his earphones out. His laptop joined a pile of papers on the desk and he was on his feet.   
  
“Namine,” he said, offering his hand to her. She nodded, and shook it. He was head and shoulders taller than both of them. “Thanks for coming.”   
  
“A pleasure.” She turned her eyes to Xion. “Sorry I’m late, I got lost. Xion was kind enough to show me the way.” Xion didn’t think that Axel had looked at her for so long before. His eyes were probably _technically_ hazel, but they had so much green in them that it felt a sacreligious label.   
  
“And now I’m going to have to be rude and ask you to leave, Xion.” He stretched, hands behind his head. “Else you get information the rest of the class doesn’t,” he explained. She nodded, and glanced at Namine.   
  
“Um, I--”   
  
Again, three pencils, an eraser, a scarf, then a business card was slotted into Xion’s hand. It looked to be hand-drawn, looping gold letters and vines around the borders. “Text me?” Namine asked. Xion felt words stuck in her throat, so she just nodded. “Thanks again.” Xion left grinning. She went back to the hall, and up at Namine’s face on the ceiling.

* * *

**To Namine**

Hey Namine, it’s Xion. It was nice meeting you the other day. :)   
  
**From Namine**  
hi xion! it was lovely meeting you. would you like to get coffee some time? i think between the arts and drama buildings there are probably ten coffee shops to choose from.

 **To Namine**  
Yes, absolutely. There’s a nice place next to the Dance building called Oblivion.  
  
**From Namine**  
are thursdays okay for you?   
  
**To Namine**  
Yeah – is 3 okay?  
  
**From Namine**  
see you there.  <3


	3. Chapter 3

Trigger warning for a brief reference to spousal domestic violence.

* * *

 

“Hey, Ma.” 

“Hey, kid.”   
  
“I’m almost a foot taller than you, you know.”   
  
“Yes, and you have been for ten years. You will be ‘kid’ to me until the day I die.”   
  
“No chance of redemption?”   
  
“There’s no such thing as redemption.”   
  
“How are you, Mum?”

“My hip isn’t… working.”   
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
“The joint! It’s frozen.”   
  
“Oh. I’m sorry. What are the doctors doing about it?”   
  
“Nothing. Actually, no, they’re giving me more drugs. That’s all.”  
  
“It’s not fixable?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“I’m sorry.”   
  
“Why are you calling?”   
  
“Because I call every Wednesday at noon.”   
  
“Then call next Wednesday at noon.”   
  
“Love you, Mum.”   
  
“Too, Axel.”

* * *

Roxas hadn’t heard Xion come up beside him, and jumped when she took his hand. She chuckled. “Sorry.” She had her phone in hand as she hugged him. They swayed back and forth slightly, the wind meshing their hair together. “You’re so adorable,” she said, and poked his sides. 

He slapped the side of her head impossibly gently. “Don’t be silly.” He noticed that she was wearing make up. Even her scarf seemed to be ironed. “Why are you all dressed up?” he asked. She went bright red. He grinned, disbelief in his eyes. “You have a date!”   
  
“I do not!” She jabbed him in the stomach, at just the point under his diaphragm that she knew made him shriek. He glowered at her and rubbed his stomach. “I’m just meeting a friend.”   
  
“I thought I was your only friend,” he said, as sincerely as he could. She snorted.   
  
“Easy to think.” Xion bit her lower lip. “It’s the girl on the ceiling.”   
  
Roxas stilled entirely. “What?”   
  
“The painting of the girl on the ceiling. It’s that girl.” Roxas tilted his head. “It’s her. Exactly her.”  
  
“Our Anna?” Xion nodded. “Our witch protagonist?” She nodded. “But… are you sure?” She nodded. “Can I meet her?”

“I… I’m meeting with her at three.”  
  
“I’m in Dialect,” Roxas said with a disappointed frown. He brightened up. “But with the way your blushing I’m sure I’ll be seeing her soon anyway.” Xion chuckled and started walking away from him. “Or I could just look her up on Facebook.”   
  
“Could you spell her name?” she asked. He sighed and chased after her.  
  
“Probably not.”   
  
“Precisely.” Xion went on ahead.

Roxas saw himself out of the corner of his eye, a flash of honey blonde hair and misshapen limbs. He jolted, felt his stomach clench. He turned, slowly. The Art students had an installation scattered over campus, mirrors upon mirrors in human forms. They were beautiful and horrifying, distorted all in their sights. The theory was that you couldn’t see what the statues truly were because you were obscuring them, and yet they were no use as mirrors – you couldn’t see yourself, either, the mirrors too complex and faceted. He saw his thighs in one of their hands. Shoulders stretched over their own. Face protruding from breasts. 

  
He felt his heart racing, racing, racing. He turned slowly, and walked away. He pulled his jacket shut. He kept his eyes on the ground.  


* * *

  
Xion and Namine had the same odd penchant for building stories. They both got to their classes late because they’d been so absorbed in each other, ‘getting to know you’ joined with ‘building fantasy universes’. They arranged to meet again the next day, but Xion swallowed the request for Namine to come to the senior drama hall. It felt too weird, too convoluted. Roxas had forgotten that she was meeting Namine, much to her relief. She didn’t want to talk about her butterflies. She wanted to cradle them in her hands and keep them selfishly to herself. Still, she stared up at the ceiling. She wondered if Namine had painted the girl, or maybe restored it. If she knew what was written in gold leaf. She touched her wrist and felt her pulse. She heard people shouting. Her hands shook as she put her earphones in.   


* * *

  
Days were blurry things, eight until six most days a week. Acting with a capital A was the only class that kept Roxas on his toes – though, not literally, with dance units permeating his course. He _hadn’t_ played spacejump since high school, and every single session with Axel started and ended with a round. He prioritised it over everything else. He was giving them less and less time, told them to balance on each others’ stories. It was terrifying, how tightly woven they all were.   
  
Each day or each week Axel gave them a topic. Generally a feeling. Sometimes a body part. Sometimes a word. The man dressed like it was the hottest day of Summer as it got colder, and colder, and colder. His tattoo curled around his hipbone, ducked into the lining of his jeans, touched the small of his back. He was dancing, standing still. He hid in back corners in Contextual Studies, and none of his students dared look back at him.   
  
Composition for their major works in the musical theatre stream had begun, and while the staff were all brilliant – Demyx, musical director, Zexion, visual designer, Luxord, choreographer – he couldn’t find pieces that fit one another, that would tell enough of a story. He had whiteboards all over his walls – one of them for each of his classes, but a whole wall for the major work. Everything kept turning around in circles, no matter how many diversions or changes he threw into his script. Xion asked – wide-eyed and trying not to look worried – whether it was the work on _their_ musical that was disturbing him. He didn’t know how but he knew that it wasn’t. She drew little flowers and faces on each of the whiteboards and turned any perfectly harmless words into swears as often as she could.  


Roxas was sitting on the edge of Axel’s desk at five o’clock on a Friday. Axel was sitting on the arm of the couch above Sora and Kairi. “What’s the game today?” he asked. He had tinted his lips gold.  
  
“End of the world as we know it,” Tidus said.  
  
Axel’s lip quirked. “Good. Who’s first?”   
  
“I’ll go.” Roxas stood, and brushed his jacket down. “Can I use someone for my piece?” he asked. He didn’t want to meet Axel’s gaze and he didn’t know why. He felt like a twelve year old with a crush on a teacher, a sexual awakening all over again. It wasn’t shame. Not quite guilt. Just a little wrong.  
  
“Could be phrased better, Rox,” Sora said.  
  
He flipped him off. “Fuck off.”   
  
Axel snorted. “Yeah. Use Marluxia. Then me.”   
  
“Do it twice?”   
  
“Yeah. Would we be audience or costar?”   
  
“Audience.”   
  
“Yeah, twice. But first of all, how would you rationalise your choice of audience member?” Axel stood, rolled his shoulders back. He gesticulated vaguely over the room. “All of you, sit down in rows, take on a character you’ve seen in a theatre.” He sat at Roxas’s side on the desk. They were sort of the same height, Roxas thought. Sort of. “Who do you choose, on what grounds?” He looked over the group, on their phones, leaning on one another, staring at the ‘stage’.   
  
“Tidus. He’s focused on the stage, his posture and frame are open. He’s looking around to the entrances, so it’s clear he knows there might be an alternate entrance than stage.” Tidus was wide-eyed and earnest. “He looks to be over eighteen, and he’s smiling. If I approach him he’ll probably smile more, or open his chest a little more.”   
  
Axel nodded. “What do you do if he looks panicked? Closes off at all?”   
  
“I’ll have made eye contact with him. If he’s not comfortable I’ll give him time to show it. If I come up to him and _then_ he panics, I’ll either distribute my focus between he and Sora, or, if I can’t use two people, turn to Sora, or, if I must, keep going with him but without physical contact – simulating proximity rather than actually doing it.”  
  
“Good. Where would you like Marluxia?”   
  
“Why Marluxia?” Roxas asked before he could sensor himself. Marluxia looked to be asking the same question.  
  
“Because he can’t stand being the object of an action and he needs to learn to be.” Marluxia stood up, practically bristling. “You don’t want to be embarrassed? Don’t pursue acting,” Axel snapped. “Where do you want him?” he asked Roxas.  
  
“Where Sora is.” Quickly, Sora switched places with Marluxia, shoving him into the chair. Roxas touched Axel’s arm and pointed to the chair that would show him best. There was stillness, for just one moment.  
  
“I need the stage.”  
  
“Okay.” Axel took his seat, crossed his ankles. “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”   
  
Roxas left the room. It seemed to surprise them. He slammed the door behind him, stood in the hallway. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and spoke loud and solid and slow. “We are the first and the last,” he paused, took a breath.Put his hand on the door. “We are the ones that liveth and were dead.” He was a preacher, almost. He stepped into the room and every eye was on him, where they were supposed to be. “And behold: we are alive forever more, and the keys of death are in our hands.”

He rolled his neck, back and forth, looked around, smiled. He was walking through a crowd. Pushing past people. Through a backstage door. He perched himself on Marluxia’s knee, but kept his hands folded in his lap. “See?” He ducked his head, looking at Marluxia carefully, waiting to be assessed. When Marluxia said nothing, he said, “Me and everyone else were just treading water until our bodies gave out and we just sank back into the darkness.” He turned in, closer. “Have you ever been so depressed it felt as if every nerve ending in your body was exposed, red and raw?” He cracked his voice, and rest his forehead against Marluxia’s. He was careful to tilt his mouth away, not breathe too heavily. He braced his chest, and said, “You’re being used by them. All I’m doing is giving you the chance to choose the right side.” He closed his eyes. He could feel Marluxia twitching to move under him. “Just… tell me what you want. I’ll do everything I can to give it to you.” He raised his hand to Marluxia’s cheek. “Because there’s what I believe and then there’s you.” Their lips didn’t touch, but he drew back like they had kissed. He slid from Marluxia’s lap, walking backwards, hands outstretched. “I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seem a waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.” He stepped onto a chair, then onto the desk, still eyes on Marluxia. “Come with me.”  
  
There was gentle applause.   
  
Axel tapped Marluxia’s shoulder, and they switched. “I’ll comment after,” he said. “Again.”

Roxas didn’t know why he felt like he’d been slapped. Still, he left, slammed the door. He did everything precisely the same as the first time, but the warmth of Axel’s legs under him was different. He couldn’t think clearly. He couldn’t think well enough to turn his lips away, basically breathing the words into Axel’s mouth. If they touched, he tried to wipe it from his memory. Unlike Marluxia Axel was perfectly still, and pulling himself away was a cold, unnatural action. “Come with me.”   
  
He sat down on the desk with his legs crossed under him. No-one applauded.   
  
“If you were even slightly unsure about the person’s comfort you couldn’t do that to them,” said Axel. “You could have someone – the director, the producer, a family member, someone you pay twenty bucks a night – sit there, comfortably.” Roxas made himself look at Axel. The man’s eyebrows were close together, his teeth digging into his lower lip. “The poem was Yeats, but what was the rest?”   
  
“A… zombie T.V. show. ‘In the Flesh’.”   
  
“Why did you choose to start outside?”   
  
“Well--”  
  
“Actually, why the door? Why slam the door?”   
  
“Because… because it would end with a slammed door. It’s a cycle. The end of the world as we know it happening over and over again.”   
  
“How was Marluxia?”   
  
“He… squirmed a little bit, which is what I was expecting.”   
  
“Okay.” Axel stood and began to pace. “Are you talking to the same person the whole time?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“You cover a hell of a lot.”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Why an audience member?”   
  
“I need the audience to think that I could be talking to them. If the love interest isn’t defined it could be all of them, any of them.”   
  
“I didn’t feel like it could have been me,” said Seifer. “Not at all. It was him. You chose him, I had no question.”   
  
“Try it again, but without an audience member. Have the love interest there with you.”   
  
They went almost half an hour over time because of how long they spent on Roxas’s piece. His stomach hurt and his head spun. It was exhilarating. Xion grabbed his arm at one point, when Kairi was performing. She put two fingers over his wrist. “Calm down,” she whispered. His head was spinning, spinning, spinning--   
  
Sora’s hand was on the back of his neck. He put pressure on the nape, so hard it hurt. People were still talking, Axel engaged in a passionate discourse with Kairi, but Sora was looking at Roxas in the way that reminded people he was real. He was on Earth with the rest of them. “Xion, there’s a bottle of chocolate milk in my bag. The yellow one.” Sora pinched him. He slapped him away. “Are you with me?” Roxas nodded and took the bottle from Xion’s shaking hands. “You okay?”   
  
“Yeah, just-- just feeling a bit sick.”   
  
“Home?” Xion asked.   
  
“He can come home with me,” said Sora, in a tone not made to be argued with. Xion stepped away. Roxas wanted her close. “Drink,” he ordered. Roxas did as told. He saw Larxene looking at him and felt shame fill him up. He couldn’t stand it.   
  
He went home with Sora and Kairi and worked on his script on their couch. He ate carefully, drank Riku’s healing tea, let Sora fuss over him, and tried to forget he was real. He walked home the next morning, before the other three had risen. They slept all together, most of the time, surrounded by pillows and brightly coloured blankets. Roxas felt a stab of wanting in his chest.  
  
The cold was only just bearable, but he focused on his music. He put everything on shuffle and tried to find a word or a theme or a note or a _something_ that he could shape his major work around. He ran for the latter half hour, getting home sopping with rain and sweat and C sharp minor playing on repeat in his head. He corrected Xion’s ‘I love you’ (flowers underlining) on the whiteboard to ‘I love you, too’, and wrote out a chord progression and a name: _TRAVELLING MAN_. He left the whiteboards and his voice recorder only when it was time to sleep that night. 

* * *

  
Axel’s phone was obnoxiously loud. “Hey, Ma. You okay?”   
  
“Yes.” He waited. “How are you?” She sounded even more uncomfortable than usual.   
  
“I’m fine, thank you.” He settled his phone between his ear and his shoulder, and started unpacking onto the desk. She didn’t say anything. “Has something happened?”   
  
“I saw a film,” she said. “It was about a man who hit his wife and went to prison.” Her words were clipped when she was young, and as she’d aged they’d only gotten more short, more crisp.  
  
“Did you like it?” He opened the windows and felt the wind cut him.  
  
“Don’t be cruel,” she snapped. “I didn’t raise you that way.”   
  
He resisted the urge to fight. “Sorry, Ma.”   
  
“It was a good film. We went out to the cinema.” He heard voices in the background. Carers had such distinctive voices.   
  
“That’s great. Did you get popcorn?” He flipped the whiteboard over. It still had writing from the last lesson. Tidus had drawn a circle stage in the centre that looked like it was moving when spun. He hit it again.   
  
“Ice cream,” she corrected. “How much do you weigh?”  
  
“I don’t know. How much do you weigh?”   
  
“Sixty point three kilograms,” she said proudly. “The doctors are all very pleased with me.”  
  
“Well, you’d hope so. I sorta feel like they should take advantage of what they should be happy about.”   
  
“You could apply that advice to yourself, you know!”   
  
He sighed. “Sorry, Ma.”   
  
“Have you seen your father recently?” she asked. Her voice was higher. Softer. He grabbed the edge of the whiteboard.   
  
“No. You saw him more recently than me.” He wiped down the board with probably too much force.   
  
“Why not?”   
  
“I don’t want to see him.” Xion rapped the doorframe with her knuckles.  
  
“Why not?” Xion’s eyes widened and she mouthed ‘sorry’ when she realised he was on the phone. He gestured for her to come in, shaking his head.   
  
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said to his mother. “Come in, Xion, it’s fine.” She sat down cautiously, as if he might change his mind. He did his best to smile. “One of my students has come in. Do you want me to call you back later?”   
  
He knew what she was going to say before she said it. “No. Call me on Wednesday at noon.”   
  
“Okay. Talk to you then.”   
  
“Goodbye.”   
  
He turned his phone to silent and shoved it down the inside of his jeans. He rubbed his forehead, tried to relax. “Hey.” Again, he tried to smile at Xion. The smile she gave in return made his lips turn and his cheeks to rise and his eyes to brighten.   
  
“Hi. How are you? Are we allowed to ask how you are?” She laughed quietly and ran a hand through her hair.  
  
He shrugged. “I don’t know, honestly. I’m fine, though. Thanks. Already sleep deprived and it’s only Monday, so that’s always good.” He sat down on the edge of his desk. Roxas had taken to sitting on it so frequently that he hadn’t done so himself in weeks. “How are you?”   
  
“I’m okay. A bit cold.”   
  
“Just let me know if you want the windows closed.” He picked at a fraying thread on his sleeve. “Was Roxas okay on Friday?”   
  
She hummed. “Oh, yeah. He hadn’t eaten all day and he was tired.” She spoke quickly, moreso than he thought right. She seemed to read his face. “He’s fine, though,” she said gently. He kept picking at his sleeve.  
  
“Are you two together?”   
  
“No. We’re best friends.”   
  
“How long have you known each other?”   
  
“We met the same day we met you.” She looked up at him and he could have believed she was shining. “It was just like… ‘oh, there you are. You’ll do nicely’. And… now we’re here.” He laughed. He didn’t even doubt that she was telling the truth. “Are you married or anything?”   
  
He snorted. “Do I look like I’m married?” She raised an eyebrow, and her smirk was a teasing mimicry of his. “Nah.”   
  
“How old are you?” She pulled her jacket closed. In turn he closed one of the windows.   
  
“I’m twenty-six. How old are you?”   
  
“Twenty-one.” She opened and closed her mouth a few times. He stayed still and let her flounder. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out.   
  
He stood – he didn’t even think about it, just stood. “For what?” He took the two steps required to sit down at her side. She was shaking. Whether from the cold or her feeling he didn’t know.  
  
“In… in Cont that first day. I… what I said to Roxas.”

He shrugged. “’S fine. Sort of the point.”   
  
She shook her head so firmly that her hair fell out of place, the fringe swapping sides. “It was still wrong of me, how I did that. I wasn’t even your partner.”   
  
“It’s fine. Really.” His voice was not one made for sincerity. He still tried. Her skin looked almost grey in the cold morning light. “How did you know?” he asked after a long silence.  
  
“I… don’t know.”   
  
He ran his hands back through his hair. “Smart kid.” He smiled – or maybe he grimaced. “Do you graduate this year?”   
  
“No.” She shook her head and looked down at her hands. Namine had drawn on them on Saturday and they were still covered in faded ink. Axel noted that it almost looked like she was wearing gloves. Xion touched his hand. The door swung open, and Kairi came in, bundled up in gold and green. Xion pulled her hand away like she’d been burned.  
  
“Morning!” She waved, tossing her bag into a corner. “Sora’ll be late – Riku’s sick so they’re at the doctor. He’ll be here ASAP, though.”   
  
Axel stood back up and rolled his shouders back. “Sure, whatever.” He left his hands behind his head.   
  
“Do you mark attendance?” Kairi asked. She waved at Xion, who grinned.   
  
“Yeah. It has no influence on your mark unless you miss more than thirty percent of tutes, or you just do poorly in your assessments.” Larxene came in like a hurricane, slamming the door. Axel raised an eyebrow at her, then turned back to Kairi. “He’ll be fine.” She sighed out her relief and sat down next to Xion.   
  
“Oh, good.” She picked up Xion’s right hand and examined the drawings. “These are beautiful! Did you do these?” Xion started talking, trying not to ramble, but she kept her eyes on Axel, and tried not to smile when she saw him blush – when Roxas came in and grinned at him. _  
_


	4. Chapter 4

“Roxas, come to breakfast with us!” Sora didn’t seem to think that he had been given a key for emergencies. Roxas, sitting on the edge of his bed, whiteboard marker in hand, grunted. Sora locked the door behind him. “Roxas,” he said again. “I’m starving. Come on.”   
  
“Nope.”   
  
“We’ve got three hours until Acting. That’s so many pancakes that could be eaten.” Roxas ignored him. Sora leaned against him and began to read the outline. He hummed a few notes where they were scrawled in the corners. “You okay, Rox?” he asked.  
  
“Yeah. Is Riku?”   
  
“He’s still a bit sniffly, but he’s okay.” He waited, even closed his eyes for a minute. “You’re not coming?” Roxas shook his head. Sora sighed and touched the back of his hand. “Call Mum and Dad soon, yeah?”   
  
He went still, and looked at Sora. They looked the same. It still amazed him. He touched the roots of his hair. He hadn’t dyed it in so long. “I’ve been emailing Ven.”   
  
Sora snorted and slapped Roxas’s cheek gently, like an old grandma. “Ah yes, history of technology lessons for our baby brother.”

Sora yelped when Roxas pinched him. “See you, Sora.” 

* * *

  
“You haven’t asked about my scar yet,” Namine said. She was balancing on a series of tree stumps, artfully hacked down, deadened and painted years ago. She had her arms out at her sides, and Xion walked below, looking up anxiously.   
  
“Do you want me to?”   
  
Namine hummed and jumped onto a new stump. “I don’t know.” She had tied back her hair, fringe and all, and the scar, from cheek to neck, down the back of her shirt, was on full display. Her cheeks were pink with the wind. She tilted her head back. Xion had done her best not to look at the scar. It was a ghastly, ghastly thing. It curled into her chest, over her back, the corner of her mouth, her temple. “I want you to like me,” she said, and Xion went bright red and tripped over a shrub. Namine jumped down from the stump to help her up, half laughing half yelling. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” She patted Xion’s sides down as if it could hold in any spilled blood.   
  
Xion caught her hands. “I like you,” she said. She struggled to get the words out. They were thick. They fought their way out of her mouth.   
  
Namine kissed her, and she shone.   
  
Their hands were linked between their chests, and Namine’s lips were smooth and then chapped from the wind. Their noses bumped against each other. They both giggled, and hugged one another tight. “I like you,” Xion repeated, stroking Namine’s hair. “I like you a lot.” They spun gently, foot to foot, swaying. “Can I...”   
  
Namine hummed. “Yeah?” Xion could feel Namine’s breath on her shoulder, through the wool of her jumper.   
  
“Do you want to meet my best friend?”   
  
Namine drew back a little and touched her cheek. “That would be nice.” Xion mimicked her, and touched the scar. It was smooth. The edges were puckered into her skin, seamless seams. She could feel Namine’s breathing through the moving of her chest. “Is that okay?” she asked. She sounded so scared that Xion wanted to cry. She kept stroking her thumbs gently over the sides of Namine’s face.  
  
“Namine, I’ve never felt like this about anyone.” Words were messy under her tongue.   
  
“Are you gay?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Xion said, because it was true. Her stomach turned. “Is that okay?”  
  
“Yeah, of course.” She slid her fingers, slowly, through the gaps between Xion’s. “Come on. I’ll buy you a hot chocolate.” They fell into easy step, keeping far away from the stumps.  
  
“Way to my heart.”

 

All of Xion’s discomfort and fears were quashed, for a little while. She liked the swooping feeling in her stomach, the rush. She didn’t care that they were moving so quickly. On the doorstep of the cafe Namine untied her hair so it fell over her neck. “My face I can pass off as a novelty,” she said. “But the neck is too real for most people.”   
  
“That’s horrible.”   
  
Namine shrugged and kissed Xion’s cheek. “It scares people. It’s okay.” She ordered two hot chocolates, and ignored the barista’s rudeness with practised ease. “So who’s the woman and who’s the man?” she asked in a deep voice as soon as the barista was gone. Xion bit her tongue to stop herself from laughing too hard. “If I do end up cutting my hair we’ll blow their minds.”   
  
“Two… two men? That’s the only way two people can have short hair, right?” Namine had taken out her pens, and took Xion’s forearm in a silent question. She nodded as Namine spoke, in an unnaturally low, booming voice:  
  
“Oh, of course! Without a deviation in hair length we’d all be the same.” She was drawing a man in a baseball cap on the inside of Xion’s wrist.

“God, I cut my hair first when I was… twelve, and I think it had spread through the whole school within a day that I was gay.” Namine blew her hair out of her eyes, and with three neat strokes the man turned into a butch lesbian woman. She drew an arrow ending in the letter ‘u’.   
  
“Ah, I got the ‘my parents walked in on me kissing another girl and everyone told me I was too feminine to be lesbian’.” Xion frowned, but Namine drew a little love heart in the heel of her hand annotated with ‘me @ u’, and Xion’s face forgot about frowning.

* * *

Zexion was glaring at Demyx and typing furiously at the same time. Roxas tried to read what was being written, but he was too far away. Demyx’s face was impassive, as usual. Zexion looked upset, but it was hard to tell with him. He was more expressive when he was signing, but so few people in the department _could_ sign. Demyx glanced at Roxas over his shoulder and promptly ended the conversation with a series of messages that made Zexion groan.   
  
“What’s up, Rox?”   
  
“Do you need to--?” Roxas indicated Zexion, who glared daggers at him.   
  
“Zexion’s just underestimating his talents,” Demyx said. “What can I help you with?”   
  
“A key change.”   
  
The hall was a mess of scattered sheet music and props, chairs folded back and stacked on top of each other in ways the headmaster would likely shriek about. It was a state of the art performance space rendered into a classroom. The staff drifted, musical theatre student to musical theatre student, and miraculously enough, stuff actually got done. It was Roxas’s favourite place in the world. Demyx ruled over an odd sort of court as head of course, graceful and lazy and all-seeing.   
  
“You’ve changed your premise,” he said half an hour and eight pages of score later. Roxas squirmed. “No, no, I like it. It’s just… different.” He flipped through Roxas’s workbook, an A3 monstrosity only marginally neater than his whiteboards. “What are these question marks?”   
  
“Ethics.” Demyx elbowed him when he said nothing else. “I don’t know whether the character is a transgender man or a cisgender man, and I don’t want to play a trans man if it’s… unethical.”   
  
“Dude, it’s your show. There’s no-one else to play the trans man, and you’re not gonna be a bigot about it.”   
  
“But it’s just… I’m cis. It’s not… right.”   
  
“This script--” Demux prodded the book. “--is never going to be performed by anyone but you. If that musical you’re writing had a trans character I’d discourage you from taking that role, but not for this.” Roxas shrugged. “What made you want to change so much?”   
  
“My… my Acting class has been...”   
  
“But how do you jump from environmentalist metaphors to an exposé on grief?” Roxas shrugged again. “Who’s your teacher in Acting?”   
  
“Axel. Axel Spencer.”   
  
“Fucking hell, I so should have known.” Demyx slapped himself, the image of melodrama. “I went to high school with that fucker, before I dropped out.”  
  
Roxas couldn’t speak for several long seconds, gaping. “Seriously?”   
  
“Yeah. He was in nine when I was in twelve.” Demyx sighed and flipped the book open. He ran his fingers over words and notes and off-cuts of fabric. “Has he seen this?” His finger had landed – surely accidentally – on the word ‘flame’. Roxas felt pathetic.   
  
“No.”   
  
“Talk to him about it.” Roxas said nothing. “Why not?”   
  
“I...”   
  
“’Cause he’s a weird fucker?”   
  
“Something like that.”   
  
Demyx pushed the book back into his hands. “I’m about the mashup between music and story, yeah?” He turned slowly, arms above his head. No-one took any notice, but Roxas saw the borders of his flesh meld with the space, the song Marluxia was singing in the corner. “My advice would be to add a love story.” He brought his arms down and smiled down at him. “At the moment it’s beautiful. I’m sad. I feel a lot of loss. But there’s not enough character to the main character – there’s not enough for us to care about.” Roxas felt a flash of indignance go through him, cold and unnecessarily vicious.   
  
“And a love story will fix that?”   
  
Demyx raised his eyebrows and nodded. “In some ways, yeah.” Roxas looked at the ground. “And hey, who’s the girl you’re writing the musical with? Talk to her about it. If she’s a writer she’ll know more than me.”   
  
He wasn’t sure why they were glaring at each other. It wasn’t a glare-worthy exchange, and yet Roxas couldn’t stop – so Demyx did, turning to look at the stage. It had a pile of top hats, canes and tuxedos, which was toppling over into the seats. He pulled pen and paper from his pocket and started scribbling.   
  
“Why a love story?” Roxas asked after a while.  
  
“What isn’t a love story?” Demyx asked in turn, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  
  
Again, Roxas gaped. “Were you always this much of a sap or is it a new development?”   
  
“Oh, it’s an always thing.” He tore a piece of paper from his notebook and shoved it into Roxas’s hands. “Here, look these up. You’ve got plenty of time, you’ve only got half your numbers.” He looked them over quickly and nodded. “Have you been working with your group?”   
  
“No, none of us are anywhere near done.”   
  
Demyx tutted. “Don’t care, work anyway. I’ll email y’all.” Roxas sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I really like it, Rox, don’t get me wrong.”   
  
“Thanks, Demyx.”   
  
Demyx slapped his back three times and drifted away. Roxas sat down between two aisles of seats and listened to the songs Demyx had given him. He felt a little bit invisible in between the navy velvet and birch wood. He felt safe there. 

* * *

Namine and Roxas came into the bar at the same time entirely incidentally. Xion was leaning against a table, staring fretfully at the door. “My two favourite blondes,” she exclaimed as they entered. They hadn’t seen each other, and while Namine looked at Roxas, Roxas averted his gaze and said,  
  
“I’m not a natural blonde, though.”   
  
Xion hugged him and kissed his cheek, putting out a hand for Namine to take. “You’re a natural blonde in my heart.”   
  
“Aw, sweetie, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Still under one of Xion’s arms Roxas offered his hand to Namine. “I’m Roxas.” Her skin was rough with callouses, nails long and bitten.   
  
“Namine. It’s a pleasure.” Her hand was so small he felt a responsibility just holding it. They must have looked like an odd, three-headed monster, all tied together. Roxas didn’t want to look at Namine. He knew it was rude, but he couldn’t do it.   
  
“You’ve met now but I didn’t think past this point,” Xion admitted with a little frown. Namine was fumbling in her pocket.  
  
“Just a second.” She was holding her phone, front-camera open, in front of she and Roxas, half of Xion’s face on screen. “We’re not taking a selfie. I mean, we can if you want, but...” Roxas fought to put his head up. Looked at himself, mirrored with long hair and scars. “We have the same face.” They looked at each other. Looked at the screen, looking at each other. Her eyes were streaked with grey. His eyes were streaked with grey. The curve of their cheeks, the soft line of their cheekbones. He had looked and couldn’t take his eyes off her.  
  
“You have a type, Xion,” he said, trying to laugh.  
  
“Oh, go away,” she snapped.  
  
He untangled himself from both women. “Okay, bye.” He waved and walked away. Xion shrieked and wrapped her arms around his waist, tugging him back in. Namine laughed at them. Five minutes later they were settled comfortably around a booth with menus in front of them, Xion and Namine holding hands.   
  
“How did you two meet?” Namine asked. She kept running her hand through her hair, which may well have been stylistic, if not for the fact that – when up close – it could be seen that she was covering her scars, again and again and again. The muscles in Roxas’s neck were so tense that they itched.  
  
Xion was looking at Namine like she was glowing. “We were on the same tour around senior campus. Then we raced to our Acting class.”   
  
“Who won?” Namine asked through her laughter.  
  
“Me,” said Roxas. He tried not to look too proud. He failed. Xion elbowed him and he shrieked, just as the waiter came up to take orders for their drinks. He looked disapproving – Roxas scowled at him.   
  
He realised that Xion made him want to stay alive. Namine made him want to be a better person. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like her. He didn’t like their face, or the fact that it was _theirs_ , not _his_. He didn’t like the crawling under his skin.   
  
He only just had enough focus to hear her ask, “Do you have a boyfriend, Roxas?” He didn’t like imagining her scar on him.  
  
“No. God no.”   
  
Xion wasn’t looking at him, so caught up in Namine. “He’s too busy being infatuated with Axel.” She winked at him, and he kicked her under the table, face getting hot. Namine cooed.

  
He threw his hands up. “No, I just-- urgh.” He ducked his head.  
  
“That’s hard,” said Namine. “Is he queer?”   
  
“Of course he’s queer, but he’s also my teacher and also hates me.” He pretended to read the menu to keep his face down. He wanted to yell at Xion.   
  
“He does not,” she said. “He’s just abrasive.” Roxas ran his left forefinger down the line of drinks, as if he gave a fuck about the differences in wines. He could see Namine’s hands. They were stained with ink. Her nails were long and untrimmed and painted ocean blue. He liked her hands. Anything that wasn’t her face. He liked her speaking, her intonation.  
  
“From the little contact I’ve had with him he seems very, um… erratic? Very talented. But I’ve never had a conversation with him where I’ve felt like it’s a conversation.” Roxas nodded. It was a veracious reflection on the man. “May I draw on your arm?” Namine asked. She tapped the inside of his wrist.  
  
He chanced a smile up at her. “Sure.” He looked at Xion. “It’s just a stupid crush because he’s gorgeous and talented.”   
  
“And he likes Shakespeare as much as you do.”   
  
“I like Shakespeare so much more than him!” he cried, indignant.  
  
“He recited an entire scene of The Twelfth Night just to prove a point!”   
  
“I could have done that.” Namine was giggling so sweetly. He didn’t want to hate her. He kept his eyes on her hand, his arm. Green spirals were growing from his veins. “You two sort of met and went ‘fuck, I’m so gay for you’, right?” he asked.   
  
“Pretty much.” Her pen stopped still in the crook of his elbow. If he looked up at her with his head tilted to the left he couldn’t see the scars. His heart was racing and he was amazed she hadn’t commented on his sweating hands. “It was just one of those… moments of, ‘oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you’.” The intensity of it made his ribs burn and his heart ache.  
  
“That’s really sweet.”   
  
Xion touched his other arm. He felt grounded in her fingertips. “It was the same with you, you know,” she said. He looked at her, with her vibrant smile and messy hair.   
  
The two women were making a triangle of the table, holding each others’ hands and touching his arms. “Yeah, I know. You’re so gay for me,” he said, leaning in as if to kiss her. She kissed his nose and somehow made it defiant.   
  
Namine withdrew her pen from his arm and said, “You just have a thing for our face.” She pinched her own cheeks and drew the skin out. She relaxed her eyes into laziness, and they were all giggling. Roxas stuck his tongue out – perhaps weak compared to Namine licking her own nose.   
  
Roxas raised his eyebrows and turned his lip wrong-side out, speaking with an exaggerated ‘hiss’ to his voice.“We’ll find everyone in the world with this face and you’ll be head over heels with all of us.”

 

Namine’s hand was still on his. Xion was doubled over with her laughter. “Bullies!”   
  
It took several minutes for the three of them to calm down. Roxas’s head was pounding. He was feeling _too much_ , though he wasn’t quite sure what all the feelings were. Namine’s fingers pulled his skin taught to make it easier to draw on but it felt like it was his whole body under her. Head spinning. Spinning. Spinning.   
  
“Excuse me for a moment.”   


Cold. Cold. Cold.

  
The water was from pipes exposed to open air, and it felt like it was cutting him through the skin. His hands were numb and stiff. He could taste yellow rising up in his throat.   
  
Cold water. Cold water. Cold water.

  
His eyelashes were sticking together. His hands shook as he ran his thumbs over his eyes, down his cheeks. He swilled the water around his mouth. His head was slowly stopping its pounding, as he splashed water over his face again and again. He looked at his face and managed to push aside the idea of scars. He remembered his face, and remembered Cloud dying his hair for him. ‘Now _we_ look like twins,’ he had said, with a small level of indignation. Roxas – bitterly – pointed out that Cloud was still half a foot taller than him. Cloud’s nails dug ever so gently into his scalp. He could just see himself in the mirror, silver foil through his hair. His eyes looked brighter with blonde hair than brown.   
  
He touched the pulse point at his carotid, and forced himself to look at himself in the eye. His lips were browner than Namine’s. She was white, for heaven’s sake, and he was not. His ears stuck out more. His chin jutted easily, where hers was soft. He raised his arms above his head. Water was dripping down the front of his shirt; he let it. He didn’t like his arms. They were odd, blotched with colour, muscles not even on both sides. They were bigger than Namine’s, though. And his hands: sure, there were callouses on his fingers, but where her hands were small and dainty, covered in paint, and nails bitten, his were smooth, clean cut. He didn’t want to hate her. He didn’t want to see her scars. He didn’t want to see his own body, to even _have_ a body. He lifted his shirt up. He didn’t have much belly fat, but he pinched what was there. It was grounding. It was _his_ body, _his_ pain, _his_ fat.   
  
There was a knock on the door so loud his arms fell to cover his face. He shook. “Hey, can you come out? Some of us have gotta use the loo.”   
  
He rubbed his face dry as quickly as he could, and stepped out with a quiet ‘sorry’. The pub looked different when he looked at it again. Not quite so tightly, not so watery inconsistent. Namine, across the floor, looked different. Her scars looked like her own, like they didn’t belong on his face as well. Xion was looking at her like she was the warmest colour in the world, and Roxas thought the same, for a moment. Namine’s lips were full and pink, fuller and pinker than his. Her eyes scrunched up with her laughter. She touched Xion like she was porcelain, and Roxas would love anyone for doing that.

  
“I ordered for you – same as last time. Is that okay?” He couldn’t remember what he’d ordered last time, and he was quite sure it wasn’t okay, but still said,  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.” He smiled and met Namine’s eye. The scar faded into her eyebrow – perfectly high and neat. She grinned and he didn’t flinch.

* * *

Xion was half-asleep on Namine’s shoulder. “I gotta go, babe, but I’ll see you tomorrow?” Namine pressed her lips to Xion’s head. She mumbled sleepily.

  
“See you.” With a gentle kiss and two strong hands Namine settled Xion back in her chair. She offered her hand to Roxas.   
  
“Lovely meeting you.”   
  
Roxas wasn’t lying when he said, “You too.” Namine kissed the top of Xion’s head again, and left with a messy elegance. Roxas twirled his straw around the glass and watched Xion try to wake herself up. “You okay, Xi?”   
  
She nodded. The corners of her eyes were full of gunk, and she wiped at it like a small child. “Yeah. Just tired.”   
  
“You… you put a lot of energy into being animated with her,” he said. It was a concern he didn’t know if it was his place to air. The intimacy of his friendship with Xion was unknown, but it meant he didn’t know the lines of it.   
  
“She makes me want to be,” she said with a deep, sleepy smile.   
  
“That’s a bit gay, Xion.”   
  
“I was tired of being alone.” Her eyes were shiny. Roxas took her hand. “What has she drawn on you?” she asked.   
  
“A forest.” She trailed her fingers up his arm.   
  
“You’re scared of her.”   
  
He felt his stomach muscles clench, much to his disdain. “She’s really beautiful.” She was. She really was. Xion looked protective and soft and like she was getting a cold, all runny eyes and grey skin. “What happened to her?” he asked.   
  
She shrugged. She ran a finger down her cheek, like Namine’s scar.“I don’t know. She’ll tell me if she wants to.”   
  
“The… scars are the same as the cracks on the… the girl on the ceiling.” He was walking on spider webs. An image of Axel flashed to mind, a mesh t-shirt that snuck below his jeans and curled under his adam’s apple. Xion was nodding. “Did she paint it?”   
  
Xion sighed and buried her face in her arms on the table. “I can’t… every time I try to bring it up I can’t. It just doesn’t work.”   
  
“Can I ask her?”   
  
“How about we both do it? You two got along well.” Roxas nodded. He could feel the pressure, wanting to say ‘why does this woman have my face? Who mutilated her like that?’, but could just feel Xion’s mind burning, ‘She’s not mutilated, it’s a coincidence, she’s beautiful’. And the fact was that she was. He nodded and sighed. She was coughing. “I wrote a new song.”   
  
She peeked up from her arms. “Yeah?”   
  
“I emailed it to you.”   
  
She groaned and stretched her arms back behind her head. He offered her a napkin to wipe her runny nose. “I’ll listen when I get home. I’m gonna catch a cab, do you want to come?”   
  
He shook his head. “Don’t listen to it. Just rest up.”   
  
“It _was_ just a tickle in my throat. Maybe this is my penance for eating so much cake.” He kissed her cheek, despite risk of infection. “Thanks for coming, Rox.” He helped her up. She looked dizzy, felt dizzy swaying in his arms.  
  
“No, thank you for inviting me. This was really nice. I like her.” She looked relieved. Roxas felt cruel. “And you adore her.”   
  
She nodded so hard she was unbalanced. He kept an arm around her. “I’m so gay. So gay.”   
  
He snorted. “Join the club.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: headspace of an eating disorder, mentions of eating disorders

“Roxas!”   
  
“Sora? It’s three in the morning.”   
  
“Cloud’s been nominated for the Ansem Prize as best emerging artist!”   
  
“I’ll call him in the morning.”   
  
“Call him now!” 

* * *

“Love you, Cloud.”   
  
“Go back to sleep, Rox.”   
  
“Congrats.”  
  
“Thanks. Sleep well.” Roxas was already asleep.

* * *

“Hey, Ma.”   
  
“Hey, kid.”   
  
“How are you?”  
  
“I’m fine. How are you?”   
  
“I’m fine. I’m marking assessments. You never told me how bad my handwriting is.”   
  
“Yes, I did. Almost every day.”   
  
“Oh. I didn’t take it in. I’m not sure if I’ve given a three or an eight on this student’s criteria.”   
  
“But you remember.”   
  
“Yeah, I do.”   
  
“An eight?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“What was it?”   
  
“Um, a… mini assessment, I guess. They have to adapt a concept or a word on a certain day – I tell them well in advance, and they can’t write it down. This was Harry Potter.”   
  
“What got an eight?”   
  
“So I mark… compared to what they’ve done before, whether they’ve evolved or not. Their technical skill. How engaging they are. Their confidence. If relevant, their creativity in development. That kind of thing.”   
  
“What have they done?”   
  
“This one, Roxas, was basically Harry in the cupboard under the stairs. As a four year old, a six year old, an eight year old, and a ten year old. The way he grew… it was really beautiful. Really confronting. I felt claustrophobic… on his behalf, almost.”   
  
“What was the eight for?”   
  
“Well, he got a nine overall. The eight was his lowest mark, it was for the audience side of things. He broke character and engaged with the audience.”   
  
“Do you like teaching?”   
  
“No. Not at all. I hate it.”  
  
“You like their performances.”   
  
“Yeah, but they’re… god, one of them is older than me. I feel like I should be a student. I just bullshit my way through.”  
  
“That’s all you’ve ever done. How’s Saix?”   
  
“I don’t speak with him.”   
  
“Good. Nasty boy.”   
  
“Do you remember Demyx?” 

“Pretty boy, voice like an angel.”   
  
“He’s teaching a musical theatre course.”   
  
“Oh, wonderful. He was always nice.”   
  
“He was a stoner in high school, Mum.”   
  
“You never told me that.”   
  
“Because I was a stoner in high school.”   
  
“Oh.”   
  
“You knew that.”   
  
“I try to forget. What are you doing?”  
  
“What?”   
  
“That noise, what is it?”   
  
“I’m opening the door to my classroom.”   
  
“Oh. Did Harry die in the end?”   
  
“He died but then he came back.”   
  
“He should have stayed dead.”   
  
“I always thought so. Then… Ginny, or McGonagall, or maybe even Ron could have killed Voldemort. I like the idea of Ginny killing him. He fucked her up pretty bad, too.”   
  
“You drama people think about things like that too much.” 

“Yeah, we do.”   
  
“Call me next Wednesday at noon.”   
  
“I always do. Bye, Mum.”   
  
“Bye.”

Demyx didn’t exactly ‘yelp’ when he opened the door to Axel at his desk, but he did make a high pitched noise and throw his hands in the air, in exasperation or shock or both. “My Mum thinks you’re pretty,” Axel drawled. His feet were propped on a pile of paperwork, his head lolling backwards.  
  
Demyx frowned and pushed his feet off the desk. He sighed and sat on the desk in their place. “What?”   
  
“She remembers you from high school,” he clarified. “You’re pretty, apparently.”   
  
Demyx snorted. “’Apparently’. Nice to know people three times my age find me attractive but the punks in year nine don’t.”   
  
Axel’s boot nudged him in the chest. “Shut up, pretty boy.”   
  
“Thank you.” Demyx pulled his phone out, and without looking up asked, “So, you’re teaching Roxas?” 

Axel frowned, and took an awfully long time to say, “I… yeah. Why?”   
  
“Can you talk to him about his major work? He’s at a deadend and my magic doesn’t seem to be getting through to him. His narrative isn’t developing.” Axel’s eyes were sharp on him, lined in gold and scrutinising him hard.  
  
“I can’t promise he’ll be receptive, but sure.” He pulled his own phone out, if nothing else to see if Demyx would look down at him. He did.  
  
“Is he alright?”   
  
“No idea.” He shrugged and shifted to accommodate for Demyx’s feet on the arm of the chair. “I don’t… really talk to them.”   
  
“You mean they don’t know how much of a loser you are?” Axel glared up at him. “Aw, baby.” Demyx touched his cheek on an awkward angle, but it was soft and warm. Axel froze and so he froze, jolted slightly, “Is that okay?” he asked, voice suddenly soft.  
  
Axel didn’t answer for a few seconds, but made no motion to pull away. “Yeah,” at last. “I fucking hate this school,” he said, and put his hands on Demyx’s hips, cocked an eyebrow.   
  
“It’s not that bad,” Demyx whined as Axel pulled him down into his lap. It was a familiar pose. He laced an arm around his shoulders. “It’s really not!” he said at the incredulous look he received.  
  
“If you say so.” They sat in silence for a while, both working on their phones, occasionally shifting for one another’s comfort. Demyx would never point it out, but could feel the rapid beat of Axel’s heart at his side. Axel would never point it out, but Demyx’s skin was covered in goosebumps, and the white, smooth scar from his right hand halfway up to his elbow was not hidden by his sleeve nor his fingerless gloves. When they next shuffled around, he slid Demyx’s sleeve down surreptitiously. A rhythm, intricate but clear, was being tapped out on the side of his neck. “How’s Marluxia doing? D’you want me to talk to him?”   
  
Demyx smiled and shook his head. “No, he’s doin’ good. He’s doing this… beautiful period piece. He’s managed to fit the breaking of the Berlin Wall into an hour-long musical.”   
  
“Huh. Cool. I didn’t realise he… cared about history.”   
  
“Did you realise that all of them are – shock, horror! – human?” Axel jabbed him in the ribs. He yelped, but they were both laughing quietly. Axel’s chin still fit perfectly over the edge of Demyx’s shoulder. Demyx stroked his hair back behind his shoulders. “You’re always welcome in my office or my classes, by the way. I mean, as you’ve figured, but… the invitation’s there.”   
  
“Thanks, Demyx.” The moment was gone. “I, um, have a lecture to get to, but I’ll let you know how it goes with Roxas.”  
  
Demyx got off his lap and stretched, arms above his head. “Thanks.” They both smiled, but that was all there was room left for in any quota for affection. Axel left fast, closing the door behind him in silence. 

* * *

Xion was sick. Roxas appreciated her determination not to infect the class, but he missed her. He missed her being strong beside him. Axel was blasé about her absence, and grumbled something about ‘faith’ which surprised everyone. Roxas tried to suppress his crush, but Axel didn’t _walk_ , he _danced_. He recited sonnets like some people did their ABCs. The intensity of the class was suffocating. Nine people when they were all there, plus the teacher. Twenty-five to thirty hours a week together. Just hearing snippets of conversations Roxas knew all about Marluxia’s new girlfriend, Larxene’s concerns for her baby sister’s health. Exposure to bodies told him Sora had hickeys from his pelvic bone up to his throat in two separate lines from two different mouths, and Tidus had self-harm scars from ten centimetres above his knees to his collarbones. He knew Axel’s tattoo was large and intricate and would have hurt like hell over the bone.   
  
“Who here is good at breathing?” No one answered. “It’s not a trick question, who’s good at breathing?”   
  
Sora, Roxas, Marluxia and Tidus all raised their hands.   
  
He glowered down at them all. “Can any of you waltz?” Roxas nodded. Axel appraised him, then gestured roughly. “Come here.”   
  
Roxas stood, balanced neatly on the balls of his feet. Axel took his right hand and pulled him in. “Settle on your feet.” Roxas dropped. When Axel took his waist he instinctively took his shoulder. It was an almost-awkward stretch, and Axel’s hands were hot. “Pick a duologue that’s been on the syllabus.”

“Brecht--”  
  
“No.”  
  
“’Earnest’. Act two?”   
  
“Marluxia, every eight bars tell us to speed up,” Axel said. Marluxia looked far too smug about it. “Do you want to lead?” Roxas shook his head. “Just follow me, then. I won’t let you fall.” Roxas wished he could hide his face. It was so hot, and their hands were sticky together. “Hold your shoulders for a ballad. Don’t speak for eight bars so we can set the rhythm. If you stumble on a line keep going.”   
  
“Okay.”   
  
“One two three, one two three, one two three.”   
  
Roxas tried his best to tune out the choked laughter of his peers, but he was hyper aware of everything around him. Axel was strong. The lift on the second ‘three’ was the easiest he’d ever had.   
  
“Speak,” Marluxia said. Roxas did as told and held his shoulders for a ballad, messy in his coordination of speech and movement and breath. “Speed up.”   
  
Axel lifted him up – he braced his hands on his shoulders and kept speaking, traced down the line of his shoulder to his waist and spun him out. Axel was perfectly stable, his words matching the rhythm of the dance, his breaths neat and coordinated. “Speed up.”   
  
Their feet knocked. They spun, they spoke. Roxas could feel his chest getting heavy, sore. He got the words out, and well, but each time he heard Marluxia’s voice his throat tried to close in on itself. He didn’t let it. He could see Axel’s sweat, and feel it in his hands. He was sure there were sweat patches all over him. He barely _knew_ when his feet were off the ground, he just _felt_ it. Years and years and years of dance lessons made it automatic, years and years of Wilde let the words come naturally, years and years of ballads gave him breath. He let himself spin, and focused on breathing, breathing, breathing, not letting himself go numb.   
  
The scene was over. Axel was clutching him to his chest by both hands. They had immovable eyes on each other. Roxas was gasping. Axel somehow wasn’t. They weren’t letting go of each other.  
  
“How long was that?” Axel asked the group as a whole, pulling away and wiping his hands on his pants. Roxas rushed to his bag to get his water bottle.   
  
“Almost fifteen minutes,” said Kairi.   
  
“We can learn from musical theatre actors. In general, their endurance, their breath control, is far better than anyone else.” Axel kept wiping his hands back and forth over his pants. Roxas could feel his hands burning. “If you can’t breathe you’re useless. If you can’t control your breathing you’re useless. Accents, singing, projection, bodily control, intimacy, noise, corpses. All breath.” Roxas straightened back up. Sora tossed him a towel. He wiped down his face and watched Axel for a smile, a frown, anything. His makeup was wet but still intact under the beads of sweat. His chest rose and fell in a neat pattern. “Thank you, Roxas.”   
  
“Thank you,” he echoed. He was sure he could feel handprints on his sides.   
  
“Okay. You all won’t be able to do that and I don’t want you to, but you’re breathing like the air is sharp. You need to be in control.” He spun the whiteboard around. Kairi tugged Roxas down into her lap, and he took comfort in her hands on his knees. She was putting up with his sweat, which was truly something. She was the only person who hadn’t looked at him funny. He put his hands on hers as Axel talked away.

* * *

“You all good, Rox?” Roxas stopped at the door. He waited until Sora was gone before turning back. Axel was sitting cross-legged on the desk, head tilted a little back.  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”   
  
He shrugged and unfurled himself, let his legs fall off the edge. “You’ve seemed a bit off past couple of weeks.”   
  
“Is there something you want me to change?” He shrugged again. “I’ve just been a bit tired.”   
  
“How many courses are you taking?”   
  
“Five. I mean, they switch around occasionally, but yeah, five.” Axel had the humanity to wince, at least. “What about you?”   
  
“Two, plus the dissertation. Is Xion alright?” He turned the conversation around so quickly Roxas physically felt his head spin.  
  
“She’s getting better,” he said, after the concerted effort to figure out the answer was fulfilled. “Still vomiting, but not as much.”   
  
“Is she bulimic?”   
  
Roxas went cold. His chest ached. “I… don’t know. I don’t think so.” He dropped his bag at the door once more, and stretched, arms above his head. It was awkward, he decided. The ‘adolescent with a crush’ in him was overwhelmed with their aloneness. Something needed to be said, and the faint smell of sweat reminded him. “Where’d you learn to waltz?”   
  
A half-smile covered Axel’s face. Some of his makeup had come free, and Roxas could see what must have been a thick layer of freckles half-concealed. “I had to take classes a few years ago when I played Dorian Gray. You?” In an awkward rush, he sat at Axel’s side. They did alternate in classes, sitting on the desk. They could share.  
  
“My… my family is a performing arts family.” He stretched his legs out, looked at the rips in his jeans. “My Mum is a dancer.” He could see Axel’s realisation out of the corner of his eye.  
  
“Wait… Brannan. As in Lulu? And Cloud?”   
  
He kept his head down, letting himself look to Axel’s shoes. “Yeah. Lulu’s my Mum, the dancer, my Dad is Robert, the director, and then Cloud’s my brother - pianist.”   
  
“I didn’t realise.”  
  
“We try not to draw too much attention to it. We’re here on our own merit.”   
  
“Why here, though?” Roxas didn’t say anything, because he didn’t have anything _to_ say. “I mean, we’re not exactly the most well regarded university right now.” He stayed still as he said,   
  
“We both started here three years ago. The reputation wasn’t quite so bad then, it was just rumours about Xemnas, and the quality of education was still considered state of the art.” Roxas figuratively shook himself and physically threw himself back onto the desk, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. “We’re both almost done. We weren’t gonna leave.”   
  
He heard Axel’s shuffling, so he was leaning back on his hands. He could probably only just see Roxas’s face, head half-lolling off the desk. “Well, so, Demyx asked that I have a word with you about your major work. Is that okay?”   
  
“Yeah, sure.”

Axel kept shuffling, ‘til he was sitting cross-legged on the desk, staring down at Roxas. His eyes were wide open, not blinking. “Is now okay?” Roxas thought, in hindsight, that he should have sat up, but instead he just hummed and tilted his chin in implication of a nod. “Walk me through the task.”   
  
Roxas’s brow furrowed. He didn’t like explaining things. He liked understanding things, but not having to communicate them clearly enough to be understood by others. “So… we’re in groups of five, each with our own major work. The other four are our cast members and backing vocalists. So… along with helping out the others in our group we-- fuck, sorry.” Roxas sat up too fast, and his neck twinged painfully. He exhaled heavily and willed himself not to blush or cry or both. Axel stayed silent as Roxas rubbed his temples and tried to make his thoughts take order. “It’s an hour long mini-musical,” he said. “While the songs don’t have to be original, the script and their usage and the choreography, the design, the director’s concept, the lead-sheet if not the full orchestration… all have to be self-created.” He didn’t want to look at Axel. He was so neatly self-contained, and yet he didn’t seem to focus on himself at all. He just waited. “Mine’s… I don’t really know yet.”   
  
“Who’s the main character?”   
  
“Judas. He’s an orphan, grew up in poverty. I haven’t decided if he’s a trans man or not. It’s… I suppose he’s getting clarity in his identity. Figuring he can be something even though he’s nothing. People die. He grieves, it reflects his character… all that stuff.”   
  
“Why the name ‘Judas’?”   
  
“Some cheesy bullshit about his parents cursing him before he could even talk.”   


“Who are the other characters?”   
  
“He’s in a workhouse from a young age--”   
  
“Which era is this?”   
  
“Seventies. Glam.” Axel grinned, then schooled his face back to stillness, but not before Roxas went happily red. “The workhouse staff as integral to his childhood. Two travelers, Leo and Rita. They encourage him to leave his town and do something with himself. He and Leo fall in love. Leo dies. Rita doesn’t.”   
  
“How does Leo die?” 

“Train crash. He--”   
  
“Why are they in love?”   
  
“Because they make each other passionate about being alive.”   
  
“How does Leo’s death affect him?”   
  
“He feels alive on his own.”   
  
“Is it a toxic relationship?”   
  
“No. It’s a complex one.”   
  
“What happens to Rita?”   
  
“She stops traveling and--”  
  
“Does Judas?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“Because he was stuck for so long.”   
  
“Why does Demyx think you’re stuck?”

The words came out unchartered, and he couldn’t have spoken them an hour beforehand, because he didn’t know them an hour beforehand. “I have all of these scenes that don’t quite fit together. Like, two musicals worth of content, but nothing fits.”  
  
Roxas hadn’t quite realised how fast they were talking until Axel slowed down. “Judas is in almost every scene, how much space does Leo take up?”   
  
“Almost as much.” Roxas spaced his words out, and fast-forwarded through the scenes in his head. “If he’s not there he’s probably being spoken or sung about.”   
  
“Is it a love story? Is that what it is inherently?”   
  
Roxas sat up, and felt himself unbalance on the edge of the desk. With a concise motion Axel’s hand was on the small of Roxas’s back, with just enough force that he could balance himself. He hadn’t needed the help. Axel didn’t need to leave his hand there for quite so long. Both happened anyway.   
  
Roxas let his back rest against Axel’s hand for just a moment, the strength of contact infinitesimally changed but change all the same. Axel’s hand fell to the desk between them and they weren’t looking at each other any more.  
  
“I don’t know,” Roxas said at last.   
  
“Then figure it out.” Axel examined his nails and the chipping pink polish. “And don’t make him trans. In an hour you’re already covering so much, and a trans man is a hard narrative to fit into the Seventies.” Roxas hummed his assent. He wanted to talk about Axel’s hands and how sweetly the left one fit on his back. He wanted eye-contact. “Tell me if you need anything.” Axel glanced up at him through his lashes, with just the implication of a smile. “See you tomorrow.”   
  
Roxas had been dismissed. “See you tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dialogue as a diversionary tactic? no, never!
> 
> thank you for reading, and as always, please do review, or come chat to me on tumblr. i'm thomtrebond.tumblr.com


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roxas has a body. He's not very enthused about this.
> 
> Content warning: elongated anxiety attack and the head-space thereof, eating disordered thoughts, discussion of eating disorders, and food.

For days Roxas wasn’t aware of anything but that his thighs were too big, and that they _ached_. He liked ballet, of all the dance units he had to do, but two hours on the barre a day was not natural for him. He was glad to be almost done with university. He’d had three assignments due over a two day period, and while he loved working, working hard, his body and brain both screamed. Maybe his body moreso. He wasn’t quite sure. Or may his brain was melding a little too much with his body, focusing too much on it.   
  
He had to run around the very edges of campus to avoid the fucking art installation with its endless mirrors, damn the risk of being late. Xion knew just enough not to fuss over him, and he kept thinking back over Axel’s question: ‘is she bulimic? Is she bulimic? Is she bulimic?’. She probably was. He didn’t know if he wanted to know. He knew he should. He knew he should be there as a best friend for her. He didn’t want to, just then. He slotted himself into conversation with Hayner and Tidus. Axel, dressed in all black, was scrawling something on the board while grumbling about boundaries and safewords. His handwriting really was appalling.   
  
_Badics ond tnust_

Bodies and trust  
  
“Fall over,” Axel said. His voice cut through all of their conversations. Most of the group automatically fell to their knees or their stomachs. “Good. Stand up, pair up.” 

* * *

Roxas wished Xion was his partner, even if she was bulimic and he was whatever he was. She was with Larxene, and Roxas was straggling on his own, switching out with Hayner and Sora. Xion would make him laugh. Bodies were so stupid, and they were all they were talking about in Acting with a capital A.   
  
“I need to step out for a minute.” His voice was scratchy with pain. Sora helped him to his feet, concern painted on his face. Axel took over, his height and strength better suited to lifting Roxas up. He sat him down on the battered old couch. Roxas was too pale and tired to protest.  
  
“Are you hurt?” The rest of the group went on with the task.   
  
“No, I just… I think I pulled something.” Sora sat at his side and offered him a water bottle.  
  
“Doing this?” Axel’s brow was furrowed with concern. Doubt flickered in his eyes. Roxas shook his head.   
  
“Ballet,” he said. “I think I overdid it.” Axel nodded.   
  
“Okay. Doctor.”   
  
“No, I can-- I just need a minute.”   
  
“Don’t let an injury get worse,” he said. He left no room for negotiation. “The uni doctors are open, they’ll slot you in if you don’t have a doctor of your own.” Roxas was shaking his head. “Roxas.” He crouched down so they were eye to eye. His hand settled on Roxas’s knee. He rubbed a tiny circle into the side of the joint. His hands were as bony as he was – of _course_ – and looked as fragile as a baby bird, but the strength was still there. Roxas could feel the jagged edges of Axel’s nails through his pants. “Don’t hurt yourself. It’s not worth it,” he said, in volume just for him. Roxas’s heart hurt.   
  
Axel helped him to his feet. “Sora, can you make sure he doesn’t hurt himself any more? I’ll fill you both in tomorrow.” He nodded, and they helped Roxas back to his feet. As the two of them went back down the corridor, Sora holding half of Roxas’s weight, they heard Axel call out to the group, “Are any of you in pain? You need to fucking stop straight away, yeah? Know your limit.”   


Roxas didn’t respond. He was too aware of his own body, both legs aching. His mother would have shouted at him for being so silly. He sort of wanted to shout at himself. 

* * *

Roxas’s thighs were bound, and his head hurt. He wasn’t supposed to be so stressed. He also wasn’t supposed to be a solid fifty percent infatuated with his teacher, but he figured that it had happened anyway. He usually sat in the first train carriage, but that involved walking a little further, and he had decided to be lazy for the day, caught a bus rather than walking to the station, drank hot chocolate instead of coffee. As soon as he sat he saw Axel opposite him, curled up in his green poncho, head against the window, eyes closed. He was shaking a little in the cold. 

  
How Roxas hadn’t noticed that they were on the same train line he wasn’t sure, but it made his heart hurt. The train jolted to a stop, and Axel’s eyes snapped open. He had a tear under his eye again, this time gold. He nodded at Roxas.

  
The word stuck in his throat, but Roxas still said, “Morning.”   
  
Axel’s smile was soft. He still looked half asleep. “Morning. Excuse me, I can fit in twenty minutes of sleep here.” He indicated the window next to him, and Roxas laughed, stifling it with a hand as an old man glared at him.   
  
“Sleep well, then.” Axel nodded, eyes already closed.   
  
They walked from the station to campus in silence, Axel slowing himself down so Roxas could keep up. He felt fatigue like a blanket. Axel’s energy was dichotomised with how exhausted he seemed to be most of the time. Roxas admired his ability to sleep on public transport – the motion always kept him awake.   
  
“How are your legs?” Axel asked as they came through the gates.  
  
“Pulled muscles in both thighs. Fine, though.” Roxas wanted to hide his face with his shame.  
  
“Idiot,” said Axel. Roxas’s face burned. “Take it easy, okay?” Axel stopped and faced him. His face didn’t stop burning, but he realised there was no weight in ‘idiot’, almost more like affection – he cut himself off on that thought. In stillness the difference in their height became more obvious, and Roxas’s neck began to hurt with Axel’s silence. He seemed to be fighting with his words, something left to say. Roxas didn’t want to look away from him. But then Axel grinned and looked away. “I’ve got an appointment with our ever-charming deputy. Wish me luck?”   
  
Roxas groaned at the very thought of Saix. “Break _his_ leg,” he said. Axel _cackled_.  
  
“I like the way you think. See ya, Roxas.” He gave a two-fingered salute, and left Roxas grinning hopelessly. Yet again, he skirted around the edge of campus, but Xion still found him, looping her hand through the crook of his arm.  
  
“What’s got you so happy?” she asked, and he realised he was still smiling. He modeled his face into a scowl, but curled his arm closer through hers all the same.  
  
“Nothing!” he said, too late for her to stop herself from laughing at him.   
  
“You’re adorable.” She kissed his cheek. They stopped. He kissed her cheek. The way he felt about Axel could not be more disparate from the way he felt about Xion, and the sheer intensity of it was like… learning to love Sora from scratch, having missed two decades of growing together. Like a sister but not quite, and not quite being madly in love with her, but not quite that either. Xion kissed his other cheek. He had raised it with her, once. What made them what they were. She had just said, ‘I’ve spent my whole life looking for a friend. Just a friend. Nothing extravagant. Every time I look at you I see a moment when I wanted a friend, when I needed one. I see every single moment we could have had together ‘til now and all the ones we might just have.’ Then she laughed and said, ‘and I trust that you won’t think that I’m mad.’ The ease of that came in him knowing perfectly well that _he_ was mad, so even if she was they fit just right.   
  
He didn’t want a soulmate, and he didn’t think that if they existed she was it. But her presence in his life was unprecedented and he never wanted to let her go, even if she was throwing her guts up everyday.   
  
Her words filtered back to him. “Namine made bagels. Isn’t that the sweetest thing in the world? She text me at two in the morning saying ‘I’ve never made bagels and I feel like it’s something I should know how to do’, and so she made bagels.” They were walking again, and Xion was proferring a blue paper bag at him. The smell made sickly saliva swell in his mouth.  
  
“Raincheck for lunch?” he asked. Her face fell as she tucked them away. “She’s ridiculous,” he said. “Like, properly surreal.”   
  
She still looked worried, but all the same nodded. “She made the bag, too! Out of recycled paper.” Roxas shook his head, amazed.   
  
“She is something out of a fairytale.” They giggled over which fairytale Xion and Namine fit best – from Cinderella to Snow White, the consistent thing was Roxas’s teasing that they had love at first sight, and Xion blushed happily.

* * *

Axel, ever late, sat three rows behind them in Context three hours later. He was jerky in his motions, unusual for him – he even got a reprimand from the Professor when he accidentally knocked over a chair. Roxas wondered if he was embarrassed that his students could see him in a different position of power – or more, lack of one –, but he suspected that the reality was that Axel didn’t give a damn. If he was wrong it was unfortunate, but the extent to which Axel was actually human was a constant source of intrigue. He had gotten to the point of doing theory work for one class in the one after – perpetually behind, and even behind in prac work. Xion was scribbling edits in the margins of his major work as they were lectured on theatre as a tool of propaganda. He had no idea how she kept up with her work when she spent so much time lying on the desk, staring up at Namine’s face and writing, whether their musical or something else. He couldn’t look at the painting of the girl. She had such fine bones and such a sad face and he couldn’t bear it, knowing that was him.

He was uncomfortable with how close he was to Xion. It had been years since he and Sora had anything like the closeness that he and Xion did, and he saw Cloud so infrequently that the love they had for one another remained detached, one step away. There were bugs under his skin, at the curve of his hips and below the lump of fat at his navel. Xion was leaning against him, and it itched.  
  
Axel left early. That itched, too.

* * *

“This would be a four hour long musical,” he whined, eight hours later.

  
“If we go back a hundred years that’d be perfectly acceptable.” Xion tapped him on the nose with a fingertip.  
  
They were sitting on his bed, Xion’s bag taking up what little floor space there was, two bagels sitting atop it. Roxas ignored them and their tantalising presence, tightening his belt every time his stomach grumbled.

  
“How do we even put magic on stage?” he winged, and flung himself onto the cushions. She kicked his leg, and though it didn’t come near hurting him he still kicked back. She sat on him.  
  
“Suspension of disbelief on the audience’s part,” she said as he squirmed. He knew he was being a prat, but he just didn’t care. Life sucked and he sucked and she sucked and everything really sucked. She was humming quietly as she worked,   
  
They worked in silence for a little while, but Roxas’s concentration lasted poorly. “Have you asked Namine yet?” he snapped. He didn’t mean to snap. But he did snap, and Xion did give him a reproachful look.  
  
“No.” Xion closed her notebook and trailed a finger down the front cover. “I don’t even know how she got her scar.”   
  
Silence, again. Xion was looking at him expectantly. He thought of a hundred things to say and most of them could have fucked up their friendship severely, and they both knew it.

“Anna needs to die,” he said. It was a way out _and_ he believed it.  
  
Of all the things he could have said, that wasn’t one of the ones he expected to make her tear up.“What?” she whispered.  
  
“She can’t live,” Roxas said. He thought that she’d known that. “It doesn’t… fit, that she comes out alive when… the whole point was that she wasn’t meant to be. That was what caused the problems. It’s our conflict.”   
  
“Things can be… brought back in union. Conflict can be.” She was staring at his hands, so he stared at them, too. He only vaguely remembered punching a wall in a University bathroom, but the blossoming bruising on his knuckles clearly had the details memorised.  
  
“But should they be?” he said quickly. “I wrote another song.”   
  
“Roxas.” Xion picked up his hand and kissed his fingertips. Not his knuckles. Never touching his knuckles, holding him by his wrist. He let her, kissing his nails. He didn’t want her to hurt him and somehow the affection she gave him in that moment hurt far more than the chance that one day she would leave him. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, her lips settling across his nails.  
  
“I don’t know,” he whispered back, and yanked himself away.  
  
She packed up her things without saying a word. She left the two bagels and an apple on his bedside table. He curled up around his grumbling stomach and slept.

* * *

He got up at four am with a pounding head and ate both bagels. Went straight back to sleep. Threw up into the sink when he got up at six. Sobbed on the floor of the shower until the water ran cold.

* * *

He did nothing – a literal, deep nothing – for the rest of the day, until the sun was beginning to set. His bedsheets smelled, and his skin was red and oddly blotchy from the excess of water on it. He opened the windows and the mere reach of his arms hurt him. He curled up against the cushions, back straight against the wall and started systematically going through all of his emails and texts from the day.  
  
The emails:  
__  
Dear Mr. Roxas Strife,  
  
This is a courtesy email to inform you that you have now used one of your two permissible absences for MTS821. You may miss one more class, but past that point will need to provide valid documentation. To access the University’s definition of ‘valid documentation’, please visit the Student Services website.

_\-------_

_This is a courtesy email to inform you that you have now used two of your two permissible absences for ACU813. From this point onwards will need to provide valid documentation. To access the University’s definition of ‘valid documentation’, please visit the Student Services website._

_\-------_

_This is a courtesy email to inform you that you have now used one of your two permissible absences for MTS857. You may miss one more class, but past that point will need to provide valid documentation. To access the University’s definition of ‘valid documentation’, please visit the Student Services website._  
  
Kind regards,  
Student Services, authorised by Luxord Spence, Executive Manager of Student Services

_  
Roxas my man, hope all’s good – your groups going to send audio recordings to you, pay attention._

_-Demyx_

 

 _Dr. Demyx_ _H. Wyndham  
Head lecturer, Music: Practical Application  
Head of the School of Musical Theatre_  
  
And the texts, fifteen from Sora, all repetitions, two from Xion, perfectly informative, and one line from an unknown number.  
_  
let me know if you need anything to catch up. -A  
_  
Roxas’s hands shook as he text back.  
_  
Could you email the outline to me?  
_  
Just a minute later:  
_  
__sure – as soon as I’m home_ _._  
  
Thanks.

 

Somehow, the fact that he smiled at that moment was what told him he needed help. That a text from his _teacher_ doing the bare minimum was what made him smile. He pulled a scab off his hand and tossed it at a wall. His phone hummed as it rang.  
  


“Hey, Cloud.”  
  
Cloud made a startled noise, caught between a laugh and a gasp. Roxas could just see the way his cheeks broadened when he smiled. “Hey, kid. How are you?”  
  
“Good. How are you?”  
  
“Good. Tired.”   
  
“Yeah, I’ve heard. Mum and Dad are so proud of you.” Roxas could still see Cloud smiling. He wondered if the acne scars were fading, if his cheeks weren’t so puffy.  
  
“I don’t feel like I’ve worked hard enough for them to be proud,” Cloud said, more musingly than anything else. “I haven’t… struggled enough.”  
  
Roxas scoffed, and tore another scab off.“That’s utter bullshit. You put more work into your music than anyone I’ve ever met.” The second scab bled.  
  
“I dunno. Do you have a boyfriend?” Cloud’s voice was so steady.   
  
Roxas snorted. “Nice diversion. You should brag for a while.” Cloud was silent. Like Roxas, he was good at that. Silence. “When will you be home?” Roxas asked after a long time.  
  
“Are you okay?” Cloud could have been sitting across from him, bowlegged and uncoordinated, and _concentrating_ in a way that no-one else could. Roxas missed him, and he hadn’t realised how much. He didn’t bother responding. “You only ask that when you’re in a bad place.” He didn’t want to admit it. “June 19th,” he said quietly. Roxas got out his diary, found a pen, discovered the pen was broken and found a pen before Cloud spoke again. “Are you eating, Rox?”   
  
He felt like he could have snapped the pencil. “Come on, Cloud.”   
  
“Answer me.” Roxas opened his mouth to try, but only a gargled, choking noise came out. Cloud waited for him, as he always had. He seemed to recognise the moment when Roxas gave up the attempt to speak. “Would you have… would you have started not eating, if… if I hadn’t?”   
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I would have.” He hadn’t bothered waiting to respond, because he knew it was true. Something about _negative space_ seemed integral to who he was, for as long as he could remember. “I’m gonna go,” he blurted out. “My prac teacher gave a weird assignment, I need to figure out how to approach it.” While technically true, Axel had given the assignment two weeks before.  
  
“What is it?” Cloud asked.  
  
“’Don’t move, don’t speak’.”   
  
Cloud snorted. “That’s… in acting?”   
  
The idea of his big sibling smiling made Roxas grin. More than two years on testosterone, and Cloud’s smile hadn’t changed at all. Roxas was so, so grateful for that. “Yeah.”   
  
“Have fun.” From anyone else, Roxas would have blanched at the implication that he wouldn’t succeed at the task with ease, but the reality of it was that he would likely struggle, as would Cloud.  
  
“Thanks.”   
  
They should have hung up at that point, but they lingered. “What have you got in the fridge at the moment?” Cloud asked.  
  
Roxas glared at his kitchen wall, trying to remember. “Cheese. Um… butter. Olives.”   
  
“Can you go grocery shopping?” Cloud asked. Even if Roxas said ‘no’ he would have made him, so with a resigned sigh said,   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“Okay. I don’t have anything in the fridge either so we are going grocery shopping, and then we’re making… sweet potato and chicken breast salad.” Roxas snorted at the asburdness of the specificity of it. “Don’t laugh at me, I just Gogled trending recipes and it sounds healthy. We can figure something out.”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“Good.” Roxas wanted to make a joke, but he couldn’t think of anything. “Put pants on.”   
  
“I already have pants on!” Roxas shrieked. Their cleanliness was another matter, but he _was_ wearing pants.  
  
“Then I’ll put pants on. Just a sec.” Cloud dropped the phone, and it made just enough noise to make Roxas wince. He realised that it must be a very different time for Cloud. A quick search told him it was seven in the morning. Eleven hours difference. He winced with guilt and busied himself putting a jacket on. He probably hadn’t _woken_ Cloud, but he couldn’t have been awake for long. Still, Cloud was chipper when he said, “Let’s see how much each of us has to pay for precisely the same ingredients.” Roxas laughed.  
  
Together, they shopped, made dinner/breakfast, made their beds, and did the dishes. By the time they were done Roxas was ready to sleep, food settled in his stomach and the joy of actually talking to Cloud rather than texting having calmed him. And Cloud was ready to go to rehearsal for the day. “Promise you’ll have pancakes for dinner,” Roxas said. “Else you won’t have had the most important meal of the day.”   
  
Cloud laughed at him in a brotherly fashion. “No promises, but I’ll try.”  
  
“I love you, Cloud. You’re… you’re great.”   
  
“High praise.” Cloud paused. “I love you, too, Roxas. Just… look after yourself, okay? You’re doing so well, and you… you need your body. And… realistically, you need your brain, too, and that goes out the window quickly enough.”   
  
“I’m not...” He felt sick in his stomach again.   
  
“Every moment you avoid food, or look at your body in a less than objective way, I _know_ you can’t and won’t text me, but just...” Roxas counted fifteen seconds before Cloud spoke. “Tube feeding isn’t fun, love.” Cloud’s voice broke on ‘fun’ and lilted upwards on ‘love’ - a name he hadn’t really used for Roxas since he came out. Roxas’s heart hurt.   
  
“I know.” He remembered all too well.  
  
“Then keep knowing,” said Cloud. “Don’t forget it, it is-- it is...”   
  
“I know!”  
  
“No, you don’t. But you _might_ , and that’s almost worse.” Cloud sighed and Roxas didn’t breathe properly and he didn’t want to take Cloud’s advice, just as much as he did want to take it. “Just take an anti-histamine and it’ll knock you out,” ordered Cloud, voice steady again. “Get up early enough that you can eat at uni,” he continued, “because you won’t want to eat straight up.” Roxas looked at the bruised knuckles of his right hand. “Promise me, Rox.”   
  
Roxas couldn’t promise every day, even though he knew that was what Cloud wanted. Still, he uttered promises for the next day and said ‘thank you’ five times, and they finally hung up. He downed anti-histamines, and tried to savour the deep sleepiness and freshly made bed.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dedicated to experiment986 on tumblr for being super lovely, and pointing out that I had marked the work as finished somehow? I didn't mean to, it's far from finished ! 
> 
> somehow I have a job, a volunteer job, and uni's about to go back so no promises timing wise, because they usually go wrong, but I think within a month for the next chapter is a fair expectation. I have 20,000 words written further already they're just not all... linked up.
> 
> as always, thank you so much for reading, I hope that you're well, and please do comment or come talk to me on tumblr (thomtrebond.tumblr.com) if you want to!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ongoing content warning for eating disordered thoughts, generalised anxiety, and some hints of suicidal thought.

**  
** “You good?” Axel asked as Roxas came in. He had followed Cloud’s orders and had a hot chocolate and toasted sandwich in hand. It was just quiet enough that no-one else could hear, just loud enough for him to hear the sharpness of ‘good’ - something Roxas _wanted_ to be a sign of concern.   
  
He smiled. It hurt his jaw. “Yeah.” Axel examined him thoroughly. His lips were a deep plum colour, eyes lined lightly. Roxas figured if he glowered back for long enough Axel would stop being so intimidating, but it didn’t work – at least, to the point that he smirked and walked to the centre of the room.  
  
“Spacejump time.” Roxas groaned and honed in on actually trying to _enjoy_ his food. “Who has something to change for me?”   
  
“No humans!” Xion chirped, sliding her hand in through the crook of Roxas’s arm.   
  
“Oh, fuck that,” Axel whined, along titters and groans from the rest of the class.  
  
“Fuck _you_ ,” Roxas whispered in her ear. She giggled and stole the lid of his coffee cup to lick the chocolate off. He scowled, but snuggled her in closer, and knew that they would actually need to _talk_ at some point,  
  
“Let’s go.”

* * *

“We start work on our play in two weeks time.” Silence. It was on the syllabus, they knew it was coming. But it was still the trigger of a certain sense of magic. “If you’re going on holidays, or otherwise occupied at all in the upcoming months _tell me_ ASAP so we can work around it.” Axel pulled a whiteboard marker out and walked to the board to scribble dates. "I've got a pal in the music department, Demyx, and he'll be doing sound,” he said, still writing. “I've got Zexion and Namine over from design for lighting and set, and they'll be consulting with me, and...” He turned back around, “with Kairi." Kairi set her jaw and went bright red. "Kairi's major is directorship, so I'll be stepping back and letting her direct, under the supervision of Luxord Spence. Classes will be split time between lessons with me and the play with her." 

  
“Which play?” Hayner asked, and Roxas realised Hayner was bouncing on the balls of his feet. It was incredibly sweet, and for a second he wondered what it would be like to kiss him.  
  
Axel looked to Kairi. “It’s called ‘Sirens’,” she said. “And Xion wrote it. It was assessed as her major work last year, and the workshopping process will be a part of her assessment this year.” Roxas looked at Xion, who was slouched over on one of the couches, still panting from the game. She looked up at him and smiled. He smiled back, albeit tentatively.  
  
Axel, with his eyes on the clock (broken as always), said in a rush, “The directing, writing, and acting will all be marked separately. If Kairi or Xion fuck up, it won’t affect any of you, nor vice versa. Two faculties, three supervisors, and two additional markers for performance. So don’t whine about that to me.”  
  
“What is the play about?” Tidus asked, and Kairi and Xion out-polited one another as best they could, and ended up co-telling the story. The class was rapt, but Axel left before they were done, Roxas watching the fall of his cloak and trying to focus on the girls at the same time.  
  
“--and I have two weeks to write my director’s folio, so please forgive me if I’m crying a lot,” Kairi finished, laughing with the rest of them, an arm around Xion. Xion hadn’t told Roxas, and while she had probably been ordered not to, he was still surprised. He supposed, though, that she hadn’t told him many things, and he certainly didn’t tell her everything. Tit for tat. 

* * *

The days were getting shorter, but it was a warm day. Roxas wandered through the music building. So many pianos, so little space. So many acoustic guitars, so many boys who looked to be on the verge of bursting into ‘Wonderwall’. Xion had rushed off after Acting with a capital A, and he had opted to skip his dance lecture in the name of self-care. The six main buildings of the University were built in a circle, in a haphazard sort of way. Lots of odd angles and little sheds in the middle, yes, but from the sky, it was a circle. 

  
Music was the nicest building. It was the oldest, and the grandest. Even if Drama was better regarded in recent history, Music had the most money over time. Roxas stared at a door, with dark wood with polished bronze. It didn’t have a room label on it, and he was in desperate want for an empty classroom to mope in. It was slightly ajar anyway, and so he pushed it. It led to a staircase, old and rickety. He wanted to read a fantasy novel about the stairs, but he was quite sure that imminent death was above them.   
  
He walked up confidently, and the door creaked as it closed behind him. It was freezing on the stairs, and they wound and wound upwards. He was quite sure there were six floors to the music building, and he thought he must be nearing the uppermost.   
  
Another door, more modern, rickety, industrial, was at the top. He pushed it open, and gasped with a face-full of cold wind hitting him. It was very, very high up. There were no more than three square metres of space, but there was another door to his left. He thought for one panicked second that he was hallucinating; that the lack of solid food had finally gone too far. It wasn’t helped by the wild red head of hair belonging only to Axel spinning around, caught in the wind. He looked as alarmed as Roxas felt.  
  
They stared at each other for a moment, until the door swung shut behind Roxas with a _slam_. He winced, and everything seemed real again. He was looking out to the opposite side than campus, towards the hills out of the city. He could see all the way to the apiaries, which he had never been to but had eaten much honey from. Axel had a large backpack next to him, and was dressed all in earthy shades of green, which added to the illusion that he was part of the Autumn leaves. It was only disrupted by the silver safety bars up at the ledge. Axel’s legs were sticking out from under them, dangling.  
  
“Nice hiding spot,” Roxas said.   
  
Axel turned away from him, looked out at the landscape. “Well, it’s worked until now.”   
  
“D’you want me to leave?” Roxas asked.  
  
Axel looked back at him, and smiled. Roxas’s heart stammed. “Nah. Stay. Pull up some cold cement,” Axel said, patting the spot beside him. He did as told. Their hands were almost touching on the ground. “How’d you find this place?”   
  
“I… was...” Roxas didn’t want to admit to skipping class, and he wasn’t quite sure how he did end up _right there_.   
  
“Loitering?” Axel proffered. They both laughed. Roxas noted that he seemed much more relaxed, outside and out of classes.   
  
“Something like that. What about you?”  
  
"I'm lesson planning," Axel said, flipping his laptop back open and gesturing to a page half full with dot points. “Don’t be a teacher, ever. It’s bullshit.”

Roxas scowled and said, “Thanks.” Axel raised an eyebrow imperiously. He tried to imagine teaching, and particularly teaching them. “I get it," he admitted. "You’re like, really young to be teaching, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. The requirement for teaching here was an HD Bachelor of Dramatic Arts, a teaching Diploma over the holidays, and the willingness to complete a Masters over the course of the school year. Hence, Contextual Studies.” Axel went back to typing as he spoke. It was an oddly easy comraderie.

“You didn’t do Context for your Bachelor?” he asked. He started pulling his work out of his bag, if only to stop staring at the curvature of Axel's cheekbones.

He hummed and shook his head. Hair from his spikes fell in his eyes, and he pushed it back without success. “No, I was at Radiant Garden University. It wasn’t offered.”

"Oh," Roxas said, pathetic as it was. They both went to work in silence, and all of Roxas's wildest dreams of what was up the stairs didn't match up to feeling Axel's arm moving against his as he typed.

Roxas wrote by hand, then typed things up, and the cold wind kept making him fumble with his pen. He hoped Axel didn't notice, and also hoped that he didn't notice Roxas's intermittent staring. The wind was breaking the loose spikes of Axel's hair apart and making them fly. Roxas didn't want to think how much of a mess his own hair was.

He got his courage up to ask, “Hey, what's your natural hair colour?"

"Red," Axel said without pause.

Roxas scoffed. "You don't expect me to believe--"

Axel paused in his typing, and faced him. "My hair was like, auburn. I dye it. But my eyebrows are my natural colour." Which was a lovely excuse to look at his eyes. He and Xion had decided his eyes must be hazel, but they were true, deep, 0.5% of the population, green. On a purely aesthetic level, Roxas wanted to immortalise him.

"If your hair was already red, why..?"

Axel shrugged. "I felt it suited my personality," he said dryly. Roxas smiled. He wanted to say something clever, but as always, his words did not cooperate. "What's your natural hair colour?" Axel asked him, which he thought was awfully polite but also quite silly, as he said,

"Same as Sora's."

"Is it--?"

"To differentiate between us? Yeah."

The exchange happened so quickly he was concerned he'd been rude, but Axel looked content. They looked out through the metal bars, and it made Roxas dizzy to look down. He wasn't scared of heights, he was determined, but it did make him dizzy.

Axel was watching the apiaries – too far away to see any detail, of course, but just close enough to see the checkerboard patterns of wood nearing the edge of the forest. "You're not identical, y'know,” he said.

Roxas scoffed. "Yeah, right. I look more like you than I look like Sora."

Axel shook his head, still staring outwards. "You look different.” Roxas wasn’t sure what to say, and Axel took that as disbelief, said, “Your cheekbones are higher, and so your cheeks are shaped differently. They curve.” Roxas started feeling cold all through him, and an imagined shiver through his cheeks. “Your eyebrows grow in a different shape: they curve up in the middle where Sora’s go down. It’s not makeup, either, the hair goes in that direction.”  
  
Axel glanced at him for the first time, and Roxas wondered if that was all. Instead, Axel looked at him and gestured vaguely at his head. “Your brow is lighter than his-- actually, the whole shape of your face is _fine_ , where his is _soft._ Your upper lip is smaller than his, and your nose is thinner.” Roxas was very careful to _not_ breathe, lest he move too much with an exhalation. “Your shoulders are slimmer, they curve less.” He felt his shoulders and neck tense. “You’re paler.” Axel’s voice dropped a little. “Your hands are smaller.”  
  
Axel shifted his weight, and Roxas realised he was _squirming_ , actually _uncomfortable_. And here he was thinking his teacher was impenetrable.   
  
He tried to find the right words to match the significance he felt in Axel’s words, and felt the growing need to say _something_. “No-one’s ever paid so much attention before.” His words were a little slurred, and if he hadn’t been blushing beforehand he certainly was then.

“I doubt it.” Roxas again felt like a blushing teenager. “Are you anorexic?” Axel asked. He was looking at the bees again. He didn’t seem to care that Roxas had practically spasmed with shock. He fumbled with his papers just as the wind hit them, and they were gone. “Oh, fucking shit--” Both of them flailed, Axel half-standing and bashing his legs against the metal bars to catch the pages flying upwards; Roxas dropped onto his back to grab the pages fated to buffet against the wall.   
  
There was mild swearing and Axel rubbing his shins as they both settled down. Roxas noted that it may well be the strangest day of his life. “What kind of idiot uses loose paper?” Axel asked, and Roxas failed to find a retort, although he dearly wished to. Despite his chastisement, Axel straightened up the pages he was holding and assessed them. “I disagree.” Roxas raised his eyebrows. “Coward as a representation of early Twentieth Century homosexuality.”  
  
Roxas shifted, leaning and crossing one leg under him so he could look at Axel without straining his neck. Axel flipped through his notes, and said – quicker in tempo than Roxas was used to,   
  
“You’ve got to look at the intersection of class and sexuality, his role in the Wars. He was conservative and private, and believed that sexuality was politics and politics had no place in theatre.” Axel ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He seemed to be processing information, forcibly remembering. He continued: “Then the revolutionary changes in the media in vilifying homosexuality can’t be ignored, either. I mean, all of the above amounts to the fact that he wrote one explicitly queer character, and that was in the sixties. Otto and Leo are arguably queer, it’s not even ‘subtext’, just logic, but they were still played off as joined by Gilda, not one another.” Roxas didn’t bother writing what he’d said down – he knew he’d remember, and then there’d be the mess of finding citations. Axel met his gaze and smirked. “And we’ve got to question whether, when Oscar Wilde died, he merely passed some of his acuity on.”   
  
Roxas elbowed him with a laugh. Axel’s smirk turned to a grin as he passed Roxas’s papers back. There was that easy comraderie between them, both flushed from the wind and leaning into each other, just a little. “Do you have a particular fondness for Coward or are you just..?” Roxas asked.

“I like Coward. I’ve studied him a few times, and I played Leo a few years ago.”

“Well, thanks for writing my essay for me, either way.” Axel shoved him with his shoulder, and they both chuckled. Axel was the one to pull away. He shuffled back under the guise of setting his laptop and textbooks up, but Roxas felt the loss of his warmth acutely. They both worked in silence for a while, Roxas reworking his outline and jotting extra points in between lines. “What were you going to say to me, that first day in Context?” he asked eventually.

Axel didn’t look up. “Huh?”

“The fairytale thing.” Axel hummed in recognition. “You started saying something, cut yourself off, and then spouted some rubbish about identity as a twin or as a ruling class.”

He stopped his typing, but still stared at the screen. “I was going to say that you hate yourself.” It was so much worse than the question of anorexia. It was so, so much worse. A full body bind set over him. “I didn’t think it was exactly… appropriate,” Axel drawled, and without waiting for a response from Roxas, went back to his work.  
  
Cold sweat had flushed to the surface of his skin, and the wind seemed perfectly warm in comparison. He couldn’t even twitch his fingers. He felt invaded, like his central nervous system was under attack.  
  
Explicit thought. Clarity. More often than not he was void of coherent thought at all, let alone such simple and all-encompassing concepts as self-hatred. His thoughts jumped from experience to experience with his emotions, more like a spectrum of colour than anything. ‘Hate’ was such an extreme end of such a solid spectrum, a spectrum he barely ever saw.   
  
He had no choice but to stare outwards. The forests consisted primarily of agathis trees, and their sap glowed, warm, like the amber it would become. The sun cut through the overcast sky and made them glimmer. It was one of the most beautiful things Roxas had ever seen. His hands and feet slowly gained feeling again. He was defrosting; the sound of his own breath like steam on glass clearing away. He shuffled on the concrete, suddenly aware of his arse being quite numb from the cold and stillness.

His movement seemed to prompt Axel into motion, who packed his things away and stood, only to sit back down with his back against one of the other doors. “What are you doing?” Roxas asked. Axel was looping his arms through the straps of his backpack at his front, so his chin rested on it.

“Sleeping,” he said. “I have a tute in an hour. Wake me up.” It was an order, and the rebel in Roxas wanted to fight it, but he was too tired. Too aware of the bulk of his own limbs.

“Okay.”  
  
Axel tilted his head down and closed his eyes. Roxas looked away and down at his work. Eventually, he got out his laptop and began typing up his essay, the University WiFi intermittently failing just enough to mean that he didn’t bother looking for proper sources. He typed,

Garland, Axel (personal communication, 5th April).   
  
and promptly deleted it. He didn’t particularly care if he lost marks for lack of sources. He didn’t particularly care about anything, he supposed. 

* * *

“Axel?”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
“It’s been an hour.”   
  
Axel threw a, “Thanks,” over his shoulder as he opened the door to the staircase.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading thus far ! my semester is almost over, so updates will be more frequent from this point on.
> 
> please do comment if you'd like to, and you can find me on tumblr at thomtrebond.tumblr.com


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for non-explicit sexual content, severe manifestations of anorexia nervosa (including non-induced vomiting), and medical treatment of eating disorders.

Even Axel was smiling – a true, bright smile, teeth showing. “Nice one, you two.” Xion and Roxas were tangled up in each other, suspended mid-air. They began to laugh as they untangled themselves (Roxas’s leg over Xion’s shoulder, her arm between his legs), the rest of the group in chuckles.  
  
“I feel like you two could take over the world,” Kairi said. Her cheeks were red, with the wet welling of tears prompted by laughter under her eyes.  
  


Roxas held Xion stable when they were both firmly on the ground. “We both graduate this year, so who’s to say we won’t?” he asked, half to Kairi, half to Xion. Xion, though, was looking at Axel, who was looking back with an odd intensity.  
  
Mere minutes later Xion stood on the tips of her toes to tap Axel on the shoulder. Roxas loitered in the doorway, uncharacteristic grin still on his face. Ha and Axel hadn’t been alone together since that time on the ledge, and if it weren’t for his assignment he could’ve thought he had dreamt it.  
  
“Could we have a consultation?” Xion asked, and Axel shook his head not so much out of refusal, but a moment’s disorientation. “You don’t have consultation hours listed, but--”   
  
Axel cut her off. “Yeah, sure. Demyx lets me use his office whenever he’s teaching – I’ll email you times?”   
  
“Yeah, thanks.” He ruffled her hair, seemingly impulsively. She beamed. Happiness was permeating the day, and even though he withdrew his hand, he didn’t seem too self-conscious.   
  
Axel gave them an absent wave as they left, arms around each other. Roxas assumed Xion wanted a consultation to talk about her script – her marvellous, other-worldly script, in which he wanted to play every single role and say every single line all at once. Again, they ended up in the senior drama hall, lying on the table. They  _had_ been bouncing dialogue back and forth at each other, plotting out the tones of their characters. Roxas felt silly writing with Xion, now that he had read something she had written on her own. She was magical.  
  
Still, they lay together, the girl stared down at them from the painted ceiling, the same sad curve to her mouth, hint of tears in her eyes.   
  
They were holding hands, Roxas’s thumb dragging back and forth over her forefinger. She looked at him and said, “I think Namine and I are going to have sex.”   
  
He snorted. “Congratulations, Xion, I’m happy for you.”   
  
“It’s scary!” she said indignantly, elbowing him.  
  
“Why is it scary?” he demanded, elbowing right back.   
  
“Are you not scared of sex?”   
  
He shuddered. “Terrified! But you two are like… fluffy balls of communication and love!” he said, and she grinned like she’d just gotten an award.  
  
“I’m telling her that.”   
  
Roxas scowled. “Don’t.”   
  
They were quiet for a minute, a bit further apart. He wondered if Namine had all the same shapes as him. Her clothes were so often loose that he could well imagine her being just as up-and-down as him. Not quite so thin, nor so muscly. Xion was a little shorter than him, and while he thought it might be nice to be the same weight as her, he also thought he might die. Their piece may have looked impressive, holding each other up and tossing each other around, but neither of them exactly posed a challenge to the other.  
  
“I’m scared,” Xion said. She sounded so vulnerable. So small. His heart fluttered for her. He turned onto his side. His first time had been unremarkable, but at the time his heart had been beating so hard he thought he was having a heart attack and had to tell his boyfriend to slow down and sit on the other side of the bed for five minutes before going back to fingering him. He grinned at the memory. Being eighteen was a weird thing to be.  
  
“Talk to her about it,” he suggested, and she groaned.  
  
“But that’s scary.” They both took the opportunity to laugh at her.  
  
“Why now?” he asked, and she groaned again.   
  
She covered her face with her hands – she was blushing so hard even her neck was red.“I’m staying at hers tonight.”   
  
“She might just paint you,” Roxas offered. “And by paint you I mean strip you naked and use your body as a canvas.” He said it with a straight face, and then they were both giggling furiously.   
  
“Talk dirty to me, Roxas, talk dirty to me!” Xion cried, so loudly that the woman in the corner with headphones on glared at them. They covered their mouths to stifle themselves. Roxas could feel the heat from her skin against his, where his shirt had ridden up.

  
“Tell me how it goes.” Xion raised an eyebrow, and he blushed, too. “No, not like that, you idiot!”  
  
“I’m so glad you’re gay or that would have been so much creepier.”   
  
“I just meant--”  
  
“I know, darling.” She kissed his lips in a perfunctory sort of way. “You know I will.” He nodded. He imagined that they would be talking about how perfect it was the next day. “I have butterflies.”   
  
They both stared back up at the portrait on the ceiling. “That’s really nice, Xion.” She giggled excitedly. “You’ve never had sex before, have you?” he asked. He knew the answer before she said it.  
  
“Never. Nothing like it.”   
  


“You’ll be just fine.” He patted her shoulder. “And I mean, you could always strip and  _ask_  that she portrait you as a French girl.”   
  
“And I assume that paint isn’t a viable substitute for lubricant?” They laughed like high-schoolers, elbowing each other until Roxas fell off the table.

* * *

“We should all go to the beach over the holidays,” Xion said as they walked through campus towards town. Roxas had his eyes on the ground. The art installations of mirrors mocked him, and every time he laughed they seemed to swallow his joy and spit it back at him with his own bulk, his own abundance of flesh.

“Hm?”   
  
“Holidays start on the 15th, yeah? You, me and Namine. And Sora, Kairi, and Riku if they might want?”

Roxas had forgotten about life off campus. “I’ve never been to a beach for a holiday,” he said. She gasped and gripped his hand tight in hers.   
  
“That’s horrible! We have to!”   
  
They reached the gates – where Roxas walked to the train, to the left, Xion walked to the buses, to the right.   
  
“I’ll text you,” she said. “Are you okay?”   
  
He smiled. “Yeah. Yeah. Are you?”   
  
“I’m good. I’m wonderful.” She put a hand on his cheek. “I’ll text you,” she repeated, and he didn’t understand why she sounded so emotional. Or perhaps he was emotional and just not coping with it well. He wasn’t sure. “See you tomorrow.”   
  
“See you,” he said.

* * *

He realised walking home that he didn’t need to  _think_  when he was with Xion. Or more, it was easier to not. He was happier that way. Bouncing words and movements back and forth with another person, without the  _room_  to think. Cloud was the same, of course, and when  _he_ had been spiralling downwards – nineteen, recently graduated, just started hormones – he made himself so busy that he ended up collapsing entirely. 

They both needed time alone. Or at least, time to think, to process.   
  
Roxas didn’t feel drained after being with Xion. And were they to spend more time together, he suspected that it would be the same with Axel. That ease they had shared on the balcony was astounding. The sun was setting fast, and he imagined that Xion and Namine were cooking dinner together, or something else astoundingly sweet. He did his very best not to be jealous, but he was. He truly was. He broke into a run, as if that would somehow rid him of such toxicity, but all it did was make him sticky and grumpy by the time he’d gotten home.  
  
He needed to work on his musical. It had improved after talking to Demyx, Axel, and Xion, each of them providing something new, but he was still behind the rest of his group. They were already giving out scripts, for heaven’s sake, and he barely had a plot scaffold.

 

The shower didn’t help him feel any less sticky or disgusting, and the hot water and constant thoughts on sex had left him mildly turned on, and the thought of jerking off brought his gag reflex forward. The year before he’d had two boyfriends and when he wasn’t with them he wasn’t exactly hesitant to hook up, but the idea of it then made him feel oddly detached from his own body.   
  
He ran his hands up and down his forearms with such force they turned red. He felt the fine, baby-soft hairs that were bursting through his skin so quickly he imagined he could feel them penetrating, moment by moment. He did the same to his legs and the bottom of his stomach, pulled little clumps of hair out. Still, he dressed in his tightest white jeans and his lowest-necked t-shirt and braced himself for the cold. Gay clubs weren’t places that jackets were generally required, and if his plan went ahead efficiently enough, he wouldn’t even be wearing his shirt for long. He had been robbed the first time he went to a club, wallet and phone gone, and had never taken either since. Usually Sora was with him, or even Riku, but in the haze of being without food and without sense, he didn’t even think twice on it. That was, until he was in a cab with a man twice his size going to a house he’d never been to before. Part of him was panicking. Part of him was hoping he’d be murdered.   
  
It was then that he realised he needed to change something. And it felt too late, panic building in him. All the same, the man – Trent? Troy? – was a good kisser and didn’t seem to have an intent to murder him. Even pinned up against Trent-Troy’s wall, shins wrapped around the backs of his thighs, he was quite gentle.   
  
Roxas wasn’t drunk. He hadn’t drunk anything, actually, lest he gain weight. Alcohol, the junk food of the starving, he thought as Trent-Troy kissed down his neck, past the curve of his t-shirt. He was only as hard as he had been in his own shower, and Trent-Troy’s vague palming at his crotch wasn’t really helping. He tried to think of Trent-Troy as being pressed against his spine, his sternum. Just a thin casing of skin, maybe, shielding the bones. He didn’t want to be in his body anymore.  
  


“What’s wrong?” Trent-Troy asked. Roxas was still pinned against the wall, but they were face to face without their lips being locked, probably for the first time.  
  
“I think… I should head home.” He loosened his legs, the hold on Trent-Troy’s hips. To the man’s credit, he helped Roxas down to his feet.  
  
He trailed the back of his hand down Roxas’s neck. It made him shiver. “We were just getting started, babe.” In the lilt of his voice, the mild accent, Roxas wondered what would happen if he went ahead with it. If they’d wake up together all tangled, and then they’d be together for the rest of their lives, a poster-worthy couple. Trent-Troy said he was a reporter or something else respectable like that, and they looked beautiful together, Roxas was sure. Nausea filled him up. If only he were drunk.  
  
Roxas pulled away from Trent-Troy. “I’m tired.”  
  
Trent-Troy sighed and stepped backwards, running a hand through his perfectly-mussed-up hair. “Okay,” he said.  
  
They stood there, awkwardly, for a long fifteen seconds, before Roxas did up his belt and straightened his shirt, and left. He had to run back up the stairs and ask Trent-Troy where they were. Trent-Troy called him a cab, and made him a cup of tea as they waited. “I’m sorry,” Roxas said.  
  
Trent-Troy shrugged. “It’s chill. I only want to fuck people who want to be fucked.”   
  
Roxas nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say to that, and drank the rest of his tea in a burning gulp. It was four by the time he got home, and four ten by the time he had run upstairs to get his wallet to pay the driver and come back up. He tossed and turned under his blankets. He hadn’t gotten undressed. He felt so, so dirty. He called Cloud, who didn’t pick up. He couldn’t call Sora. Xion was with Namine.  
  
He got to sleep just as the sun was rising. He woke a mere hour later.  
  
He showered again, but he could still smell the club on him. He dressed in layers, and anxiously checked his neck and jaw and chest for hickeys. There were none. Still, he felt the other man’s mouth and teeth there.

He bought a hot chocolate on the way to the train. It filled him up so much it hurt, like he’d eaten a five course meal and gone back for seconds. He threw it up in the bathroom and rinsed his mouth with water so cold it made his fingers sting. It was crowded on the train. He was appreciative: the people around him held him up.  
  
“Roxas?”   
  
He had forgotten they were on the same train-line. Axel looked concerned. He didn’t like that. Axel deserved to smile. So, Roxas tried to smile, but instead it just felt like he was going to cry.  
  
Axel was seated, miraculously, and Roxas wondered which stop he got on. “Sit down.” Axel pulled him in – he didn’t resist – and switched them around. “You, um, look like you need it more than me,” Axel said. He crouched down slightly so he could put a hand on Roxas’s shoulder. Roxas didn’t react. He could barely feel it.  
  
Eventually enough people got off that Axel could sit down next to him. Roxas shuffled close and rested his head on Axel’s shoulder – or more, his arm. Axel froze for a second. A distant part of Roxas realised how inappropriate it was to touch his teacher in that way. He didn’t move, though. Gently, gently, Axel shifted so Roxas’s head was neatly tucked into the crook of his shoulder and neck. He stroked Roxas’s hair, so lightly Roxas thought he must be imagining it.   
  
Tears dripped down Roxas’s nose onto Axel’s shirt, taking the fabric from olive to forest green.  
  
Axel walked him into the medical clinic at the University. It had only just opened for the day, and the receptionists looked at Roxas like he was a monster or a ghost or something else ghastly. Axel did the talking, having sat him down. “Don’t die on me,” he murmured to Roxas, who was seated, but swaying slightly. “You’ve got the lead in the play.”   
  
Roxas struggled to lift his neck enough to look at Axel. “Which one?” he slurred out.  
  
“Tanora,” Axel said.   
  
“Best not die then,” Roxas said. Axel tried to laugh, but it sounded painful.   
  
“Take the time you need, okay? You’re-- you’ll be fine. You’ll be good.”   
  
The rest of the day was a blur. The doctor made him drink a slurry that tasted like the protein powder that the ballerinas drank, holding his jaw open. Then she weighed him, and Roxas had to stop himself from screaming – a nurse covered his eyes so he couldn’t see. She took his blood sugar, blood pressure, pulse, oxygen. Made him lie down in a dark room.   
  
When he woke up his mother was there.   
  
She was so beautiful. He forgot that, sometimes. He couldn’t quite remember where he was. She had wasted away at his age, too. She barely ate anything her whole life – until she gave birth to Cloud, tiny and malnourished from her malnourishment. The guilt made her eat. Her love of being a prima ballerina was sacrificed the moment she chose to carry a child.  
  
“Oh my baby,” she said, and he sobbed into her chest. “Oh my love.”   
  
A psychiatrist gave him drugs, and a food supplement that he was to drink twice a day, even if he couldn’t eat. He was instructed to stay with someone until he was at least a little more stable, and his mother wrapped him in her scarves and overcoat to bring him home.   
  
He looked at the door to his old bedroom. He and Sora had competed to see who was taller, marking their height and weight with a ruler and pencil every week. He had managed to see his weight on the psychiatrist’s computer screen. He hadn’t weighed so little since he was fifteen and three months old, according the little pencil mark.

He slept for nearly a week. Well, it felt like that. He slept for three full days, then when he was past the haze of drugs turning him to putty, he watched bad crime shows and rom-coms that all blurred together as he dozed through them. Every day his mother or father carefully made him down two pills and drink down the nutritional supplement. They would sit with him for an hour to make sure he didn’t throw it back up. He didn’t have the energy to try, as much as he wanted to. His mother knew him so well and she knew eating disorders so well. She had nursed Cloud for  _months._ She’d given up a job that she had fought tooth and nail for, and she hadn’t blamed him for a second. Roxas had seen her, once, pushing her hand down the front of Cloud’s throat and covering his mouth, their father holding him down, forcing him to swallow as he screamed and screamed. The gargling noise was horrific. She ran a fingertip down Roxas’s neck, again and again – more of a reminder as to  _how_  to swallow than an act of force. He could feel the supplement travelling through him, and it was exhausting.   
  
On the fourth day she set him a routine: at two pm, she helped him up and into the shower. Then, once he was bundled up in pyjamas, she guided him through stretches. Nothing hard – barely as strenuous as yoga – but just enough to keep him flexible. If he had lost  _anything_  of his capacity while sick it would have made everything worse, and the way she guided him – pushed him, very nearly – was just enough. On the sixth day she took him out into the garden, with an arm around his waist. The sunshine was just enough to make everything beautiful and sparkling. She helped him put his feet in the pool. The water felt foreign. On the eighth day, they swam together for half an hour. He couldn’t move his limbs well enough to go fast, or strong. He felt like jelly. His mother assured him that it was two things. How small he was, how malnourished. And the medication, which he would adjust to in time. It had a funny name he couldn’t quite get his tongue around.

His father was just as good-willed, just as present, but he didn’t have the same experience of his body. He was a director, he told others what to do and he was never seen – he didn’t even need a body, not really, Roxas thought one day. He dreamed they were all just floating voices. It seemed much nicer. Everyone was kind and everything was quiet. Sora visited. He didn’t cope well with such things. Not with Roxas anyway – Roxas was the exception to most of Sora’s rules, and the way he lay stiff and awkward at Roxas’s side on the floor seemed such an  _accurate,_ and  _proper_ response from a boy who wanted to save the world.

Later, Roxas realised that Ventus must have been there, too, but little darling that he was, he stayed away. Roxas never wanted Ventus to see him like that. He didn’t want Ventus to be the same as him and Cloud. He wanted him to be like Sora, who was happy and clumsy and full in his own body.

He had forgotten Xion for most of the week. He didn’t quite have the emotional stamina to feel guilty for it. He had not forgotten Axel, but he didn’t know how to think about him, whether to think about him. Whether to feel angry or guilty or ashamed or grateful. He settled on not thinking – on just seeing the colours of Axel’s hair, eyes, skin. All blurring together.

* * *

“Xion?”   
  
“Yeah?”   
  
“Can you ask about my scars?”   
  
“Namine?”  
  
“Yeah?”   
  
“Can you tell me about your scars?”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Yes.”

* * *

It was seven thirty on the eleventh day. Roxas had eaten a salad with thin pieces of chicken, stripped of their fat. He’d done so sitting up, without dropping anything, and while holding a conversation. It was the most capable he’d been in  _weeks_. He had taught Ventus how to visualise his way into a sixth harmony, and they’d sung Elton John together as their parents clapped on earlier in the day. 

He stared at his telephone. It hadn’t been explicitly  _stated_  that it had been confiscated for his own good, but it was clear all the same. His mother had set it to charging while he was showering. He had dozens of Facebook messages, none of consequence, all of which he swept aside. He only had one text, from Xion, that read:   
  
 **From Xion**  
Axel says you’re unwell but won’t say anything else (he’s got a crush on u). I love you, you’re perfect, and I’ll see you soon. Let me know if you need anything.

He thought about saying something genuine, something warm and loving, but he couldn’t muster it.

 **To Xion**  
how was sex?

 **From Xion**  
Let’s just say I was not painted like a French girl.

Are you okay? 

 **To Xion**  
i’ll come back to class soon

i’m sorry i’ve been gone

 **From Xion  
** Just look after yourself first always, okay?

 **To Xion**  
okay :)

 **From Xion  
** Get to sleep. <3 I love you.   
  
 **Calling: Axel**  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Hi.”   
  
There was background noise – a pub, he assumed, with a flash of colours and lights and laughter in his eyes, or maybe just a group with the smell of red wine, and a view of golden fairy lights.   
  
Axel’s voice went quiet, deep. “Roxas?”  
  
Roxas hadn’t thought this far ahead. He lay down, breathed heavily. “Yeah.”   
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
Roxas didn’t quite know how to answer that. The old adage of not being a starving child in Africa came to mind, but the fact that he was getting most of his nutrition from a mix that looked like clay seemed both too serendipitous, and to rather avoid the point. “I’m… anorexic,” he said.   
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” The background noise was decreasing, and a door clicked. Roxas tucked himself in under all the covers, squirming to make them warm. “I… are you safe?”   
  
“Yeah. I’m at my parents’ place.” They were quiet. Roxas ran his hand back and forth over his abdomen. His ribs were all sharp, but there was just a little softness, below his belly button. He didn’t know how to feel about it, but he was sure as hell that he didn’t want to  _deal_  with it.   
  
Axel started saying, “I’m sorry I--” just as Roxas said,  
  
“I’m sorry you had to-- thank you for-- I’m sorry.”   
  
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Axel said. Roxas finally realised what was different about his voice when they were alone. It was  _deeper_. Roxas forced his voice lower to be taken seriously, and when relaxed it went higher. Axel was the opposite. He made his voice  _higher_  for public consumption. The depth of it was not a deliberate thing – to the contrary, Roxas realised.   
  
His perception of time had vanished over the days, and he didn’t think about what he might have pulled Axel away from. He didn’t have enough cognizance to focus on anything more than Axel’s voice against his ear. “You… are you  _going_  to be okay?” Axel asked him.   
  
“Yeah.” Roxas pinched the skin above his hipbone. “Axel, I just--” He breathed in deeply. “Thank you. For… I’m… I’m not very good at talking, I’m sorry, but I just-- thank you for taking me to the doctor. And um, sitting with me. And giving a damn. I-- you’re-- you’re really--” He couldn’t find the right word. “--amazing,” he settled on. It wasn’t right, but he knew it would have to do.   
  
“Yeah. Yeah, any time.” Roxas didn’t want to be seen, but he wanted to  _be with_  Axel, to feel him being close. “You… you’re amazing, too, Rox,” Axel said. It was quiet. He could have believed they were sweethearts. A little part of him did. “And you just-- I don’t-- fuck. I don’t know what to say, man. I’ve been in theatre long enough to see a lot of eating disorders, and a lot of girls-- girls in particular, I mean-- just… shatter. And you--” There were odd clattering noises. “No-one deserves it. But I-- you’re amazing, Roxas.”  
  
Roxas felt like there were butterflies through his entire body. He twitched, shivered, head-to-toe. “I’m sorry I’ve been… fucking up your class.”   
  
“The class is fucked by the sheer fact of it being mine, babe, I assure you.” If they weren’t talking about  _class_  of all things, he would have thought they were friends, the kind hurtling towards each other with an inevitability which made them frustrating to be around. Sort of like he was with Xion, but  _more_ , with more  _need._  “And you make it better. I promise. You’re good. And you’ll-- like, fuck. Even before I got to this course, it was built around the compulsory standard of a three year degree. The best way to learn theatre is by doing it – I can teach you stuff, but that’s not just ‘cause I’m a teacher. This course is basically just a residency. You’ll get better and… you’re fuckin’ set, Rox. Don’t trick yourself into thinking this is anything new for you.”   
  
“I...”   
  
“You falling asleep?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“I… Xion has been taking notes for you based around my outlines, so… just take your time. Holidays start next… Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday, so just-- fuck. I’ll see you--”   
  
“Could you stay on the line? Just until I fall asleep?” Roxas was prepared to hear ‘no’, but he did not expect it. His boundaries and sense and shame were all mussed up, and the stutters of vulnerability in Axel’s speech implied that perhaps he was the same.   
  
“Yeah, okay,” Axel whispered.   
  
“Thanks, Axel.”   
  
Roxas let his hand settle on the pillow beside his head. He closed his eyes and felt his pulse behind the skin.  
  
“I, um. I’m at a reunion party from a show I was in five years ago,” Axel began. His voice was quieter again. “Or more, I’m in the host’s bedroom. It was the production of ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’ I mentioned. So, I was twenty-one… my hair was a bit shorter and its natural colour when I auditioned, and the director’s – first time doing a professional production – first question was if I was happy to dye my hair. So, I was cast as Dorian with the caveat of bleaching my hair and dyeing it – sort of like your colour – learnin’ to waltz. It was sold out, but got mixed reviews. The weird thing is that I don’t remember many of the reviews or what I did after, but-- I’d never dyed my hair before. And my hair didn’t take it well, it looked like shit. So I-- when I was in high school, in the drama department there was this dingey little costume storeroom, and there was this bright red wig made of the cheapest plastic, and I fuckin’ loved it – I wore it any time I could get away with it. Every shit MySpace era photo of me I’m wearin’ that wig. And so I had this nasty green-yellow hair and I thought that I should go back to that. So my hair’s been this colour since. I don’t bleach it any more, so it’s like, a bit darker than when I did. But yeah. I barely remember that production itself. But I got my hair and waltzing out of it. And my first full-time paycheck, which was cool. Most of the cast were, you know, in their thirties, forties. So all of them are married with kids and shit, and I’m-- I was so relieved when my phone rang, honestly. They were asking if I was married yet and making half-arsed quotes from the play, asking if I was still breaking hearts and getting young actresses to off themselves. They keep implying I should go into acadaemia and become a lecturer. Honestly, I’m down for anything if it means I’m paid enough to move house. I get on five stops before you and I’m just-- so sick of it. I hate my house. And it’s not close to anything except the industrial area, and… Rox? Roxas?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading thus far!! Please do comment/query/etc. either here on my tumblr (thomtrebond.tumblr.com), and validate my gentle screeching about the Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer.
> 
> The next chapter should be up within the next two weeks.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for ongoing eating disorder talk, discussion of sexual violence against women and consequential death, and business corruption.

Cloud’s absence was stark. Roxas figured he was angry. While he would love it to be just a generalised ‘anger’ he imagined it was more likely to be split quite perfectly between Cloud being angry at himself, for not doing enough or for exacerbating things, and at Roxas, for being a fool when he should know better. He was angry at Cloud, too, though there was no reason to it. His anger seemed to attach itself to anyone who was absent and wreak havoc on his emotions as it wished.   
  
He spent many hours laying in bed, which was something he liked; appreciated, but it was joined by odd little muscle spasms, and a hyper-awareness of the slightest movement. His awareness of his body was a necessity, yes, but he couldn’t stand being so still and so silent he could hear his own breathing. His laptop had been returned to him eventually, but he wasn’t thinking clearly enough to work. He tried to open the University website to check his student email, but forgot the URL, so just Googled the University, his thumbs tripping over one another on the keyboard. Articles filled the top half of the page.   
  
Disgraced Castle University academic denied bail for the second time

Professor Xemnas Lambert, Chair of Castle University: abuse of students ‘is understandable sometimes’

The ongoing mistreatment of women at the nation’s leading Arts university

The corruption of Castle University

Corruption in the Castle, and how it led to a young woman’s death

Roxas forgot what he was supposed to be doing. He read fifteen articles before he snapped himself out of it, before he realised that he was reading the same words over and over again. He and Sora had made the choice to turn the news off about their University. They had a year to go, both their parents were graduates, they were proud Castle students. He wanted to dig his oesophagus out, claw his way down to his beating heart and hold it still.

He had never quite understood how a university could be a business, and how they could be just as corrupt as any. He had never realised that he _knew_ the girl who had triggered it all. Aqua Ross, who couldn’t sing as much as she tried, but could make an audience cackle or cry seemingly at will. She had been Judith in Hayfever, lead in Cloud 9, Lady Macbeth. He had forgotten about the first lesson that year, when Axel had so dismissively told them that Lionel Harding was in prison, and that he hoped they didn’t mind. ‘Prison’ was a word Roxas had seen so often in pamphlets and educational apps about eating disorders that he had quite detached it from crime. Bodies, fat, social constructs, misogyny, homophobia, depression, bullying, hormones, genetics, bodies. There had been photos taken of Aqua’s body. They were posted online and all over the news. She’d gotten in trouble when Macbeth was on for dyeing her hair blue, and she died with it blue. It wrapped around her cheeks and neck, stuck to her with the water she had drowned in.   
  
He forced himself to look away. He tried to recite Sonnet 51 in his head but he couldn’t quite get hold of the rhythm, and so was stuck on the first line again and again and again. Excuse the slow offence the slow offence excused can my love excuse the slow offence--   
  
He was staring at his hands and their baby-bird bones when he heard his mother’s voice – not a yell, but a feat of projection an opera singer would be proud of.   
  
He jumped, almost instinctively, to his feet, and promptly fell. His limbs were settling back into themselves, yes, but he was still adjusting to the medication he’d been given – he still couldn’t remember its name –, and he felt he didn’t have control over anything, let alone an equilibrium.   
  
He got to his feet slowly, feeling more like he was watching his struggle than actually experiencing it. Wanting to help the small man stand, but not being able to. When he finally came close enough to hear what was being said, he could see Xion’s outline, still in the doorway, with the door still hanging open.

“Are you anorexic, too?” his mother was saying. She was crowding Xion – taller and leaner than her, Xion shrinking down.  
  
“What--?” Her foot slipped back onto the doormat. She grabbed onto the doorframe just to hold herself steady.   
  
“Are you anorexic, too?” Roxas was trying to catch up with the accusation “Answer me! Are you?”   
“No! No, I’m not!”   
  
He took uneven steps forward, watching tongue tied. He just needed to say _something_ and then they’d both look at him.  
  
“How much do you weigh?”   
  
“I-- I don’t know!”   
  
“Mum!” It blurted out as if in slow-motion. “What are you doing?”   
  
She glanced at him, but looked back to Xion anyway. “Do you eat?” Her voice was softer than it had been, but Roxas was close enough to see Xion was quaking.   
  
“Yes. Yes, I do. I eat three meals a day, and snacks, and sugary drinks, and--”   
  
Roxas grabbed his mother’s wrist. She glared at him, but he didn’t let go. “Mum, she’s not anorexic. Or bulimic,” he said. He wouldn’t have necessarily believed himself two weeks beforehand, but as soon as he said it he knew it was true.  
  
His mother clenched her fist, and he could feel her veins under his fingertips. “Then why is she so small, Roxas? When you’re so small?” The sense of venom in her voice was tempered by how visibly she was holding herself back from shouting.  
  
“I’ve always been small,” Xion whispered. She was clearly trying to get louder, but couldn’t. She was barely holding herself from falling.   
  
Lagging somewhat, Roxas offered his hand to her. He let go of his mother.   
  
She seemed to change. Her posture, her face – an inquantifiable _change_. Roxas was more than familiar with it.   
  
He guided Xion inside, keeping her close to him lest his mother flare up again. “Come on--”   
  
His mother cut him off: “I’m sorry. I just--” She reached out to Xion, who took her hand. It was such an odd thing to do, to take the hand of a woman who was just shouting at her, and indeed, his mother seemed shocked into silence.  
  
“I understand,” whispered Xion. She was creating a bridge between mother and son, holding them both steady. “But I promise, I-- I would never encourage Roxas’s…”   


She let go.  
  
There were somewhat awkward introductions, and even more awkward exposition on that his mother would check in on them every hour, and they would need to leave for an introductory session with both psychologist and psychiatrist at three, and if Xion thought Roxas was behaving oddly she needed to tell ‘Lulu, call me Lulu’ straight away, but not leave Roxas alone.  


They ended up sitting on Roxas’s bed, staring at each other in silence.   
  
She took Roxas’s right hand, her fingers curling into the crook of his wrist. He could feel his pulse up against hers, syncopated and neat.   


“So, you’re anorexic,” she said eventually. With her tiny hand fitting easily around his wrist and half again, he figured she might just be trying to fill the space between them. But, because it was Xion, he knew that she was asking. Legitimately clarifying. As if she could believe him over all prevailing evidence if he said he wasn’t and it was all a big conspiracy and his size was a coincidence.

  
“Yeah,” he said. He looked at her hands. Her nails were all bitten down and the skin around them torn. There was blood visible under the skin. His cuticles were overgrown, the nails stubs so short they made his hands look smaller. He looked up at her through his lashes so they wouldn’t actually have to make eye contact. “You didn’t know?”   
  
She shook her head. “I didn’t know.” A buzzing noise flipped past his ear. He swatted at it as if it were a fly, though he knew it wasn’t. All the same, it ceased. Xion took that as queue to lean back, her hands crumpling up his sheets. “I’m sorry.”   
  
“Can we talk about something else?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
Xion looked around for distraction and saw his laptop. “Do you want to go through what you’ve missed? I can look at what you’ve done.”   
  
He smiled, and the buzzing noise came back, so he stopped. His mouth must have looked like a puppet’s. He tried to keep his expression soft and smiling without the actual smile, and while on stage he could have done so without thought, he felt the muscles in his cheeks bunch and tense without much control.

  
Xion opened up his laptop – he had forgotten he’d given her his password – and went stark white. He turned the screen around. Aqua’s corpse was still there on the screen, grainy pre-dawn light making her sickly yellow. “You shouldn’t look at those things,” Xion said.   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
She closed the tab. And the next tab. And the next.   
  
“Was she nice?” she asked.  
  
Roxas was sure that she _was_ nice _,_ he didn’t doubt that. But she wasn’t so easy to compartmentalise. He didn’t know her well enough to phrase it right. “She was… nice. Yeah.” Xion sighed. She had probably read everything he had, and more, and analysed it neatly. It probably hurt her. She felt such things so deeply.  
  
They shuffled to the head of Roxas’s bed, and he _looked around_ his childhood room for the first time since coming home. The decision to become a minimalist when he was seventeen only managed to take over half of his room, and the dichotomy was humorous. Half soft cream paint, half stark white with black and white checkers. Half posters and glitter, half one unframed mirror. He felt an odd tug of fondness for his younger self and how silly he was.  
  
They worked through everything he’d missed in some awkwardness. He figured he should have expected that. He should have let Trent-Troy fuck him, taken the day off classes, and gone in the next day without a fuss and without the crying and the psychiatrist and the feeding and the time off. No wonder she was uncomfortable.   
  
As promised, his mother came and examined him after an hour. She actually spoke to Xion warmly, albeit briefly, and Roxas tried not to laugh at Xion’s squirming.

  
“I haven’t felt so covert with a friend in my room since primary school,” she whispered as soon as Lulu’s clicking heels were out of ear-shot.  
  
“I know, oh my god.” They both burst into giggles, and the tension was broken all at once. He felt himself lean into her and took joy in the way she clung to his shoulder.   
  
“Forgive Mum,” he said after a moment’s silence. “She’s just…”   
  
“No, I understand.” Xion smoothed his hair down at the sides. He hadn’t looked in a mirror in so long, but his roots were probably growing out. It had probably gone lank and straight again from the lack of product and hairdrying. He probably looked quite different than when they’d met, and not just from the ten kilograms of weight lost.   
  
“She’s so beautiful,” Xion said through a sigh.   
  
Whether she was jealous or gay Roxas wasn’t sure, but he commiserated. “Yeah. She was a prima ballerina,” he said. “Now she runs charities and choreographs routines for kids who are inpatient in hospitals.” The sheer level of ‘upper class’ in his words made him wince, but Xion didn’t seem to mind. She was smiling.  
  
“She’s amazing.”   
  
“How’s Namine?” He was surprised he hadn’t thought to ask earlier.   
  
Xion went bright red and gripped onto Roxas’s hands. “She’s… the… she… oh my god.” His smile hurt his face and made his ears sting and he loved every second of it.   
  
“Tell me about it!” he demanded. And so she told him about Namine, quite genuinely, asking if she could draw on Xion’s back. She had undressed Xion with so much care Xion felt like she should stay naked forever, she felt so safe.   
  
Namine had laid her down and painted a door, half open, light glowing from within in light violet. There were shrubs and vines and flowers pouring through the door, framing it and wrapping down around Xion’s hips and the curve of her buttocks, flowers spilling from the base of her neck and down her shoulders. They had been in absolute silence, and Namine peppered kisses over every patch of skin before she painted it.   


Shyly, Xion opened up her phone to show him photographs. She was sprawled out on Namine’s bed, on a paint-splattered sheet. She had turned her head to the side in some of the photographs, smiling back at Namine. There was a photo she didn’t mean to show him, of their lips pressed together, Namine’s white-blonde hair wrapping around Xion’s head. The roses from her neck spread down to her collarbones and – Roxas assumed – her breasts.   
  
He could hear Xion’s heartbeat, and she was flushed. He smiled as gently as he could to her, and squeezed her hand. “It’s beautiful.”  
  
Xion was almost breathless. “She said she felt like she was opening me up and seeing an entirely new world.” She was so madly in love she was glowing, and Roxas basked in it. She wrinkled her nose and added, “And that sounds dirtier than it was.” They both laughed. “But sex is amazing, too,” she admitted. “I get it, now.”  
  
“I’m so happy for you.” She hugged him, and they were both in constant giggles. He felt like they were making up for fifteen years when they _should_ have been friends, _should_ have been gossiping about cute people and telling each other secrets.   
  
“What… what happened with Axel?” she asked. Her face was pressed against his shoulder. He felt the laughter leave him.  
  
“Oh. We’re on the same train-line.” That wasn’t enough, but he didn’t know where to start. “I…” And so he began at the beginning and told her about leaving her at the bus stop, and the club, and Trent-Troy, and throwing up at the train station, and Axel so, so gently escorting him to the doctor without saying a word. “I called him a few nights ago,” he finished. He was staring at a Rocky Horror poster on the wall behind Xion.   
  
“ _Oh._ ”   
  
He forced himself to look at her. She was giving him a look that on anyone else might be pitying. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking.” He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “He talked to me until I fell asleep,” he said, and he knew he sounded pathetic, like he was trying to convince her of something. In all reality, he was trying to convince himself it was real. His phone record said it was, so surely it was. Xion had grinned, though, light in her eyes. “I don’t know how he can stand me. I probably-- I probably stunk like vomit and I looked horrible and--”   
  
Xion was shaking her head so violently her fringe flapped over her forehead. “He’s a good person. And he cares about you.” It was his turn to shake his head, ugly bleach-stained mess of hair falling in his eyes. She poked him in the shoulder, just hard enough to hurt. “He smiles at you, you know? Even when you’re not talking to each other, it’s like… he knows you’re there.” Roxas’s stomach churned. He wanted to kiss Axel’s stupid pointy face and maybe marry him someday. Still, placating, Xion added, “And he’s a good person.” He came back down to Earth, and figured that the existence of good people should be a high enough standard of happiness for him.  
  
All the same, he said, “I feel so stupid.”   
  
“You’re not.”   
  
“The definition of eating disorders is stupidity,” Roxas said, bitterness to every syllable.  
  
She poked him again. He poked back, scowling. She pinched his nose. “No, it’s not, and you know it.” He blew, hard, but she kept holding on, despite the odd vibration from his nose to her fingers. They both grinned and scowled.   
  
Xion and Namine had planned a trip to the beach, as Xion had said, and they wanted Roxas with them. Why, he couldn’t quite tell, as they seemed to be so deeply embedded in the honeymoon phase that surely they wanted to be alone. The idea was tantalising, though, and even his mother consented to the prospect, albeit with much encouragement and promises of cautiousness. She seemed excited that Roxas was interested in something so dynamic as socialising.   
  
They went back to talking about classes, and eventually Roxas felt confident that he’d be able to catch up, particularly with the lag of holidays slowing everyone else down.   
  
Then he said the hard thing, that he hadn’t even told his mother about – though she surely guessed. “I’m meeting with Saix on Friday. He might kick me out.”   
  
“He can’t!” Xion cried immediately.   
  
“I’ve missed too many classes.” He twisted his fringe between his fingers.  
  
“You’ll have medical certification.”   
  
He shrugged. “I’ve still missed too many.”   
  
“Do you want me to come?”   
  
He felt a recoil within him, though he couldn’t say why. “No. No, I gotta do it alone. And… is it actually okay for me to come to the beach with you?”  
  
“Of course! Of course it is!” She nodded earnestly, eyes wide. “We’ve booked this gorgeous little Air B’n’B right near the water and we’re basically just going to be lazy the whole time. It’ll be amazing. Just get through the meeting with Saix, and whatever happens, we’ll… cuddle next to a fire and Namine will probably cover you in the charcoal.”   


He smiled, but still said, “I don’t know if the psychiatrist will let me.”   
  
“You’ll be okay.” It didn’t quite fit against what he had said, but all the same he understood. Xion prodded his side, as if trying to prove his corpse’s persevering existence. “Of course you will, you’re you. You’ll be okay.” ‘Okay’ wasn’t a trait he expected to be associated with himself, but he thought, just perhaps, it was something he could aspire to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello ! Thank you so much for reading. A short chapter this time, I am sorry, but I figured it was better to get something up than nothing. I'd love to know if you have a preference between shorter chapters more often, or longer chapters with longer breaks between uploads.
> 
> Just a note on that, though, I'm studying Creative Writing at university, which means that now semester has begun I basically have a novel due at the end of October, and then I'll be having major surgery right after. I am honestly prioritising this fic more than is responsible, so I hope to have one or two chapters up before then, but I can't promise anything. I'd also like to write something for AkuRoku Day if I can manage it, so I may need to focus on that instead. 
> 
> thanks if you read all of that rambley stuff! Please do comment or come talk to me on tumblr if you'd like to, and thank you all so so much for reading thus far, it means a lot to me.
> 
> (and to anyone who - like me - is very romance focused: there's more Axel next chapter, promise.)


End file.
